Is your bakery the hearth of your community?
Finding and promoting bakeries running community oven sessions.
Community (AKA communal or common) ovens used to be, well, common. In some parts of the world they still are.
As the cost-of-everything-crisis bites ever harder, the Real Bread Campaign is working to encourage and promote bakeries inviting people in to use their ovens when the bakers aren’t, perhaps for free, perhaps for a nominal fee or suggested donation.
Below you’ll find those that have started doing so regularly.
If you run a regular community oven initiative and want us to add it to the list below, please email the details to realbread@sustainweb.org
(If you’re running a trial / one-off session, please feel free to add the details to our calendar yourself instead)
Hearth
Hackney Wick, London. Monthly from Monday 12th December 2022, 4pm-8pm.
The People's Oven is a pay-what-you-can, drop in access to our bakery’s ovens, a warm calm space, a hot drink and cooking advice. Our suggested donation is £10 but we are grateful for whatever you can afford. It's open to anyone from homebakers who want to try out their bread skills in a deck oven, local boaties on the river Lea, to people who would like to batch cook in our ovens and save on electricity bills at home.
Bring dishes to finish in our ovens, or if you would like to prepare here then bring all the ingredients and we can lend you the equipment. Chef, baker and Hearth founder, Maisie Collins, will be on-site to offer advice. Remember to bring containers to take your cooked food home in.
To book one of the limited spaces, send a message through the website, DM on Insta or drop by the shop during opening hours.
www.hearthbakery.co.uk @hearthbakeryhw
Brixton Windmill
Brixton, London. Every Wednesday from 25 January to March 2023, 12-3pm
Warm Space and Shared Oven News
"Thanks to funding from Lambeth Council we'll be opening up as a warm space and shared oven. We'll be offering up a warm welcoming space, hot drinks and use of our oven on a first come, first served basis. This is open to anyone - home bakers or batch cookers wanting to save on energy at home. On some days we'll also have a volunteer baker here to offer up tips and advice."
www.brixtonwindmill.org @brixtonwindmill
See also
Are you making Real Bread for All?
Published Wednesday 23 November 2022
Real Bread Campaign: The Real Bread Campaign finds and shares ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. Whether your interest is local food, community-focussed small enterprises, honest labelling, therapeutic baking, or simply tasty toast, everyone is invited to become a Campaign supporter.
