Public Bakeovens

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Cooking with Fire in Public Parks


Custodians:

Alan Carlisle community garden oven

Contacts: alancarlisle1@gmail.com, aebwa.johnston@sympatico.ca

2014:





 

#2015

2015:

From oven builder Alan Carlisle: "Fired it up a few times works like a charm..."







 

#2015

October 8 2015, we visit the oven

Alan shows Yo that this is an old industrial site

Yo Utano, who carried out the CELOS guest baker project in 2010 and 2011, moved back to her home in Japan three years ago. In order to do a follow-up on public ovens in Toronto, CELOS was able to bring Yo back for three weeks in October.

Alan Carlisle, who built the temporary oven in this community garden, is a very busy contractor. But he moved his schedule around so he could take the time for us to come and make some pizza with him.

The bricks for the oven came from an industrial site that had a lot of foundry bricks left over. Everything has been re-purposed in a most ingenious way. The pizzas baked up in minutes and were every bit as good as those we bake in Dufferin Grove Park's permanent oven.


they use a broom to clean out ashes

wood storage in old industrial steel bin

A rocket stove was there too, built in the same way by stacking old bricks. Alan says the stove works just as it should.


a temporary rocket stove

fire in the rocket stove

Alan says that the oven has been used maybe 5 times. Baking with fire takes so much longer than turning on an oven. The food may taste better, or -- if experience is still being built up -- it may be burnt. Lacking a kitchen, every baking is like taking a picnic, with all the possibilities of heavy hauling or forgetting something. But oh -- the enjoyment of simplicity, unmediated by a gas or electrical infrastucture! And when ingenuity, balance, and natural materials are so evident all around, as at this oven, the oven is a totally satisfying work of art. And food.


a fine social space
 

2016

October 22, 2016

The oven has been dismantled and rebuilt a slightly different way.


from the front

from the side -- a lot of mass!

they put some bricks in front of the fire

the oven vaults upwards beyond the entry

peppers from the garden

the view is a study in contrasts
 
Alan's temporary oven, to copy

front

foundation

gap under oven floor

oven floor: two layers of plywood plus cement board

left side of oven above hearth

right side of oven
 

rise of back wall

three step-ups from front to back
 

chimney partly closed

chimney open
 

 
Alan's temporary rocket stove

a temporary rocket stove

double burner with two-level wood chamber
 

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Content last modified on April 22, 2019, at 12:52 AM EST