Community Brick Oven Dedication

It was a beautiful (but cold) Sunday to dedicate the Community Brick Oven at Hamline Church.  In order to bake bread in the morning, the oven had to be fired up the evening before.  I was out there in the darkness, loading wood into the oven and hoping that when I returned in the morning there would be a bed of hot coals. The fact that it was storming and there was a tornado warning did not deter us.

In the morning, I arrived at sunrise to see a beautiful glow coming from the oven.

The oven was a whopping 1100 degrees (way too hot to bake bread) that morning. Lesson learned that I didn't need to load that much wood in there the night before.

So all the coals were shoveled out and I left the door off for four hours, hoping the oven would cool down to 450/500 degrees for the bread bake.  Meanwhile, members of the congregation started arriving with their dough to bake in the oven.

Finally, the time came to load and bake the bread.  Luckily nothing burned, and when everybody came out for the dedication we had hot, steaming bread for everybody to eat.