Warren Lee Cohen

Camphill Communities Ontario invited my family and me to build a festival bread oven to help them bake pizza and bread during their seasonal festivals throughout the year. 16 intrepid bread oven builders joined us to create this well sculpted oven out of clay, sand and straw. Our crew included people from age 3 to 60 and was inclusive of people with a variety of abilities. Everyone was able to contribute and feel pride in their creation.

We spread the work over two days, which gave everyone a chance to need the cob with their feet, build the oven, play in the straw and contribute to sculpting the final bread oven. There was plenty of time in between for sharing food and for discussing slow-bread-culture, for singing and silliness too!

It was hard to call it quits on Sunday afternoon as finding the final form was such an enjoyable process of collaborative sculpting. (Notice the temporary door that helped us model the oven as the real door was still being fashioned out of local hardwood. Soon a pavilion will be built to house the bread oven. This will match the architecture of the neighboring Novalis Hall)

Luciana took up the task of making a fire spirit, a salamander to acknowledge the essential working of elemental beings in this creative process of transforming flour, water, salt, leaven and fire into delicious bread. It is nice to see such a beautiful and lively fire being being born out of my calm and collected partner – nothing boring there!

Already one of the families who participated in the workshop have built their own bread oven at their farm outside of Toronto. Others are busy gathering clay and bricks…

Here are pictures from a August 2010 Bread Oven Building workshop in King City, Ontario. It was a perfect hot and sunny weekend. We had an inspiring crew of 16 participants who were easily able to build two bread ovens in two days. The first oven we built quickly and fired it up the next day to make delicious pizza. We took our time with the second, added a number of details and enjoyed the process of collaborative sculpting.

We began laying our fire bricks on an artistically designed river stone base.

Many feet make easy work of mixing recycled pottery clay,

clay subsoil, sand and straw into homogeneous cob to build the ovens.

We kneaded the cob into loaf size bricks.

We placed the bricks around a form made out of sand.

We built it up like an igloo, molding the bricks tightly together.

We added a second layer of bricks for improved strength and heat retention.

It is essential that all the bricks of both layers are well kneaded together so that there are no air gaps. The structure becomes one monolithic dome.

Artists at work.

The forms were dynamic connecting and influencing one another.

Here is our finished oven complete with its oven spirit.

We removed the door and hollowed out the sand after all the sculpting was complete. This facilitated easy refinement of the doorway of the oven.

Thank you Leslie and Jamie for organizing the event. Enjoy your oven!

I was invited to bake Dragon Bread with the first grade at the Toronto Waldorf School. The 25 students, their teacher and a few very helpful parents were delightfully enthusiastic to get their hands into the dough and to shape their imaginations into wholesome and tasty loaves of bread. Some chose to make their dragons spiky and scary others saw them as more amiable creatures, waiting to be of service. None had difficulty kneading and shaping their creations. they made them in the morning and we were able to bake them for lunch. They ate a part of it and took the rest home to share with their families. Whenever I see any of the students they are sure to ask me when we will be baking again. Children simply love the meaning-filled task of baking bread especially when it is done with imagination and love. They sense the rightness of it and are  eager to participate from the initial sticky dough all the way to eating the delicious crust and crumb.

And, while making 25 smaller dragons why not make a really large one? In response to a special request from Jef Saunders from Arscura School of Living Art, I made the largest Dragon Bread that I have yet attempted: sourdough with raisins and dried cranberries, jewels in the belly that was decorated with almonds. It was fun to make and according to many reports from their Michaelmas celebration delicious to eat. The photo is courtesy of Vibeke Ball. Thank you to one and all for a fun baking day!

Come explore the art of baking bread using whole grains and natural leaven, sourdough starter. We’ll bake a variety of breads using the same simple sourdough culture. We’ll touch upon the aspects of baking that create healthy and nutritious bread and, of equal importance that allow for joy and meaning in the baking process. You’ll learn how to make and use your own sourdough culture. You’ll take home fresh baked bread, sourdough starter and inspiration for future baking.

Toronto Waldorf School
Kitchen (downstairs)
Sunday September 26, 2010
10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Course fee $75 (includes all ingredients, bread and starter to take home)

To register please contact Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto
Tel. 905 764 7570
info@rsct.ca

 

I have received the most touching responses from my Art of Baking Bread and an Evolving Picture of Human Consciousness workshop this summer. Baking bread together can be spiritual work that nourishes us body, soul and spirit. It is enlivening, awakens the senses and can be a whole lot of fun.

Hi Warren,

I had the pleasure of meeting you and your family at the RSI this summer. From the evening session in which you showed how to bake bread, the guidance of your book and the great bread starter that you gave me, I am baking very nutritious breads for my family (at least once a week): corn bread, plain bread, apple bread, scones and even pizza. I have not bought bread since I started baking! Every time I make bread I feel I ma meditating. It is a wonderful experience that I have never had while cooking. I dare to say that it feels like a spiritual practice. My children also help and I am trying to help them deepen their relationship with what they eat. 
Thank you for all your work and for inspiring others. 
Best wishes, 

Alejandra

Hello Alejandra,

What a beautiful testament to the deep nourishment of baking bread and sharing this gift with others. Thank you so much for this note. I will cherish it and likely share it with the people who are gathering with me this weekend to build bread ovens and bake pizza together. This work of baking together continues to amaze me in its power to to cultivate spiritual companionship.

Blessings on the bread
Warren

This week the Rudolf Steiner Institute offered an opportunity to explore the interconnected themes of the art of baking bread and the evlution of human consciousness with a group of  nine very engaged and fun loving bakers. This full week hands-on intensive allowed us both to bake a whole range of breads and to explore how the human diet and consciousness have changed since the agricultural revolution. Further this led us to look into the interconnected symbiosis in this change of diet and consciousness, which I have been enjoying researching for some time now. With a theme this vast and admittedly far reaching, we could only hope to touch in at certain significant moments in this panoramic journey and taste the proceses at work in these historical times and cultures. Our journey took us from ancient India and old world chapatti to Greece andpita bread, from sourdough breads in northern and southern Europe, to yeasted bagels, cinammon rolls and to the pinnacle of bread extravagance organic sourdough all butter croissants and pan au chocolat – a truly delicious journey in bread and thought! The journey continued to the modern day, to Wonder Bread, Nutritionaism and Orthorexia Nervosa. What lays in the future we can only surmise…

We began our week with the mystery of the agricultural revolution, trying to develop a palpable understanding for how human kind learned how to develop wild plants into domesticated varieties, a power which we no longer possess (even with the advent of genetic engineering!). How our modern food plants and animals were bread from their wild predecesors is still far from clear as is how this early food was then prepared to eat. Again there are many missing links in trying to understand these processes. For instance how were the early grains ground and cooked? It is not as easy to do as you might imagine using only the traditional tools, and these challenges were an important part of our process of discovery.

Next we looked at Ancient Egyptian culture, which had developed over 40 different varieties of bread as depicted in their tomb paintings. In Egypt came the art of adding leaven to the bread. This made the bread more digestible, nutritious, tasty and helped it to keep longer. It is also easier to chew and use as a base or dipper with other foods. Egypt allowed bread to rise into the third dimension and along with that advance, Egyptians entered more fully into materialism.

Our sourdough repetoire expanded into French Peasant Loaves and Sourdough Rye bread flavoured with corriander and honey. These breads were surprisingly sweet and nutty (do to my method of keeping the sourdough starter firm and dry).  Here loaves are more complex and can be shared amongst many peoples. Oven technology had to mature to consistently and evenly bake these larger loaves. These breads grew well beyond the inflated plane of earlier loaves and allow crust and crumb to develop into more spherical loaf forms. We also felt how differently the rye grain/flour responds than does wheat and how satisfying each can be if worked appropriately to their nature.

As we progressed towards the modern day, we had to include at least one recipe with commercial yeast (I much prefer sourdough for the multiple reasons listed above including improved workability). We made sesame seeded bagles which not only have a slightly more complex form, but also have the added step of being boiled before painted with egg, sesame seeds and then baked. These were both light and chew.

Our bread journey turned decidedly more decadent in our last two days of baking  in which the bread organism become ever more finely layered and rich. On Thursday we baked All Spelt Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls with generous amounts butter, cinammon, brown sugar, raisins and pecans all rolled into long logs, sliced and baked. The contrast of cinammon sweetness and slightly tangy dough was most satisfying.

 

And lastly, we stretched the dough even more finely and folded it with 32 layers of butter, rolled into fine All Butter Sourdough Croissants. This pinnacle of the french culinary art required precise temperatures, conditions and exactness. the mood in the kitchen was decidedly more tense. The singing that filled the atmosphere from the previous days was lost as we busily tried to work the dough when it was the perfect temperature before racing it back into the refrigerator. It was definitely stressful at times working in such hot weather, but the results were remarkably delicious. We baked over 160 croissants, some filled with almond butter and/or chocolate, none of which remained to for the following day.

All in all we baked a tremendous amount of bread and were able to feed the 160 participants at the Rudolf Steiner Institute, whose praise was effusive. And not remarkably, many people were most deeply nourished by the simpler sourdough breads we baked. These were baked with joy and love and song. Blessings were kneaded right into every loaf and the participants, I am convinced, could taste these and enjoy these more subtle ingredients along with the substance of the bread. It is for this reason that I always encourage my students to sing to their loaves, to pray as they knead and imagine the loaves nourishing their loved ones. Then the love is baked right in.

As if all this activity were not enough, on top of all of this baking we also spent an hour and a half each day discussing a host of themes including: The evolution of human nutrition from antiquity to the modern day, the Agricultural revolution to Wonder Bread, We studied, drew and painted the wheat plant, looked at the sacred and daily role of bread and wine in our lives, explored issues around wheat/gluten intolerance and allergies, earthen bread ovens, and looked at elements of our own food biographies. Then in the afternoons Kevin Hughes led us in painting exercises. It was a full and deeply satisfying journey of collaborative baking and research.

 

Thank you to Joy for her enthusiasm and her wonderful photography. If you would like to see her whole beautiful photo essay of this week please visit Joy’s blog .

You guys/gals are some mightily inspiring bakers!

Thanks for a great week.

Monday I was warmly welcomed at work with a gift of a 2  1/2 kg  cotton sack of freshly milled, organic Red Fife wheat, a local variety that has been grown in Ontario since the 1840’s. This grain, originally brought over from the Ukraine, was successfully grown across the wheat belt of Canada until the early 1900’s when it was supplanted by other varietals. Renowned for heartiness, flavour and nutrition, Red Fife is experiencing a revival and is now sought after by artisan bakers. My first sponge is rising as I type this post. I look forward to feeling how this dough is to knead by hand and ultimately to savor its crust and crumb. Anson Mills has some helpful information about working with this high gluten wheat. Thanks Lucas!

More good feedback from my first sourdough bread baking workshop in Canada. Many kindergartens at the Toronto Waldorf School are now using natural leavening processes to make more nutritious and digestible breads for the young children. This is such an exciting outcome from a one day workshop.

I am pleased to announce my first baking workshop in Canada.  Come and join me if you can.