May 10, 2011 - 1:33am
WFO coop or bread club?
I am almost done building my WFO, and can see that for my uses it will not get to live to it's full potential. so I was thinking about trying to get together a coop or bread club to use the oven like the village ovens of olden times. Has anyone tried this and if so what worked and what didn't? How do I get started and make contacts? I have a desire to be of service to my community and would like to meet others with thoughts along the same lines.
Tara Macon
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Hi Tara,
That's a great idea. In what city are you and your wood-fired oven located? I am thinking, perhaps I'm connected with someone in your town, with whom I could connect you? In any case, it's worth a try.
In addition to thefreshloaf.com, I have found that Twitter is a great way to network and find other bakers . . . also Facebook, the BYOB (Bake Your Own Bread) project at www.breadexperience.com, and Yeast Spotting.
Here in Chicago we run a not-for-profit bread club, which we started--precisely as you wrote--to be a service to the community, and to meet others who share our interests. If you would like to see how we do things, you are welcome to "observe" our group and borrow ideas that you like. Please go to our website and hit the "join us" button.
bagel_and_rye
Organizers of Chicago Amateur Bread BakersHi and thanks for the heads up I would very much like to have a look at your project and website. I live in Roseburg, Oregon. It is a small town of about 30,000, but has a local area population of maybe twice that amount, depending on what you call local. We are only a mile or so off of I-5 so north south travel would be easy.
So how many people do you have involved in your project? Chicago would have lots of needs to help others. Did you go through a formal process to form your not-for-profit bread club? Tax forms and the whole thing or not? I guess I had not thought about all of that. Do you have insurance and the like? Wow I guess I was thinking of something a little more low key.
Hi Tara,
I just sent out a tweet about this discussion and your efforts to form a community around your new wood-fired oven in Roseburg, OR. I also put a link to this discussion on the frontpage of the Chicago Amateur Bread Bakers. I hope these links help bakers in/around Roseburg get in touch with you.
Currently, we are 46 Chicago amateur bakers, + 4 out-of-town observers (who, like you, are considering developing bread clubs in their respective cities).
We are a young organization (4 months old today!), still very much growing and learning each day. From the outset, we have held ourselves to the standard of offering free and/or very low cost events (no more than the price of a cup of coffee) to fellow amateur bakers in our community. We have been fortunate to have the support of a number of local businesses, who provide us with space for our monthly meetings.
If you would like more information, you are always welcome to email me at j {at} designingmyday {dot} com.
bagel_and_rye
Organizers of Chicago Amateur Bread Bakers
Hello J {at} ;-)
I thank you for your efforts to help me get my project moving along in the right direction. I have not done much locally to get the word out as the WFO site is still very much a construction mess. I have been gathering brick for the oven and also the floor from every place I could find. The oven is using up a bunch of them but there are still lots of them around that need to be put down into the floor. I hope to get some photos loaded onto the WFO forum of the whole thing but I would rather make bread and work on the oven than mess around with the photos. It will all come together in time and I think with some help prove to be an asset to the people. I looked in on the CABBs web page and think it is well done I don't know anything about putting something like that together If the page is your handy-work you did a good job.
Taramacon
..........David S. Cargo and the Saint Paul Bread Club. He documents community ovens and if you cantact him he may have some good ideas for you.
http://spbc.info/index.html
I also think that it is a very nice idea and something I thought about when I built my oven also.