Warren Lee Cohen

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

We’ve landed and set up house in Richmond Hill, just north of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. Our garden is filled with wild flowers and large patches of raspberries. I am directing the Teacher Education Program at the Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto. Luciana is knitting up a storm and taking care of our lovely little girls.

The sourdough starter made the long journey from England to Brazil and at last to Canada. It was a bit sluggish at first, but soon sprung back to life. And the wheat, the hard Canadian wheat is a pleasure to work with, much more elastic than what I had grown used to in England. Tomorrow I am going to consult on my first new bread oven project. A workshop is soon to follow.

A brave group of 18 oven builders gathered at Taurus Crafts to build two bread ovens in one weekend! The first oven was a quickly built  “festival oven” that we fired up on the very same day we built it. We dried it completely on the second day and made delicious pizza in it. This oven had walls about 4 inches thick with neither door nor chimney and stood on a temporary and mobile plinth.

The second oven was crafted to last with a collaboratively sculpted exterior, oaken door and oven walls about twice as thick. This oven will work well for both pizza and many loads of loaf bread and had all of our creative energies pressed into its outer shell. Many thanks to the fine folks at Taurus Crafts who helped organize this exciting weekend. Participant comments are included below the photographs.

Dear Warren,
I want to say a very belated thank you for your wonderful course at Taurus Crafts . I was completely blown away by your heartfelt approach. You really communicated your passion and deep understanding of bread making, which has helped me return to my baking ready to (tentatively) abandon my recipes and start feeling my way into the unknown. I’m going to suggest the current class 3 maybe helps build an oven in our garden.

Another participant who went home to build another bread oven commented:
Hi Warren — here are the photos — We had a really great day doing it – superb weather – good friends and several now want to build their own — and we are the experts!!!
Many thanks for your inspiration.

Here are a few pictures (thanks to Wendy Cook) from our conference and workshop together at Embercombe in Devon. Together we focused on the evolution of human nutrition and its connection with human consciousness. And of course we got our hands in the dough and baked some beautiful loaves in their wood-fired oven.

Thought you might like to know we are baking regularly again, have spread your starter far and wide, and my daughter Mel ran a workshop recently ; unexpectedly Brian Goodwin and Cristel came and Mel taught Brian to bake – he had never done it before and threw himself into the tactile aspect, finding it very satisfying!
I hope you and your family enjoy your travels. Thankyou again for the workshop.
Love, jenny

A group of us came from England to Fabrizio Rossi’s beautiful villa in southern Italy. Each day we baked bread in the old bread oven built into the side of the villa. Then in the afternoons we each worked on one painting for the whole stay. We painted in stages that reflected the process of transformation that the bread goes through from milling, mixing with water, kneading, allowing time to rise, kneading and shaping and at last baking in a fiery oven. Each step is another process of transformation that turns simple substances into life sustaining and enahancing nourishment.

This bread oven was designed and built in the Autumn with the help of three sculptors. The form emerged as we were building it to try to suit its function and environment. It has a privileged location right outside the kitchen window and next to the main entrance. It greets them every time they come home.

There was an  badly cracked, old bread oven in this magical play-garden. With the enthusiastic help of Nuno and Stewart , we recycled the clay from the old oven, added more sand and straw and rebuilt a new oven atop the same cotswold stone base. The shape developed as we worked the cob. After a few days working and contemplating a temple form seemed to emerge, a temple for the transformation of bread. This is now a vital part of the children’s play area

I want to offer special thanks to Shipton Mill who have generously donated organic flour for my workshops, classes and events. Quality ingredients make all the difference.

Just ran a bread workshop at Emerson College in Sussex called, “The Art of Bread.” It is a pleasure to be baking around a wood fired oven with others. We had such fun baking and singing, being both serious and silly in pursuit of a deeper understanding of bread. It reminded me, yet again, just how important joy is in the whole process of preparing and eating food. Without joy food is merely substance. With joy, food is transformed into life giving nourishment that feeds body, soul and spirit.
This is an essential element in creating “Real Food.”

Click here for more pictures of the workshop.

I just returned from an action packed day in which we sculpted a bread oven for the Hay on Wye Literature Festival. Aided by the very capable hands of Gavin Pond and many eager children, we mixed recycled clay, sand and straw, using first our feet and then our hands. We shaped this into loaf sized clumps that we pressed around a temporary sand form. The oven quickly took shape, leaving plenty of time for a chimney and some collaborative sculpting. Then to cap off the day we lit an inaugral fire to begin the process of drying the oven out.

For the next week I will be baking pita bread with children and sharing bread stories from Baking Bread with Children. What a nice way to work with others!