finished oven

Here is the finished oven after it had a bit of time to dry. Here too is the first major firing after the cobbing and repairs to the fire box.

the oven's new clothes

Thanks to the dedication of our cobbing team, our oven is finally sporting some new duds. After a long day of mixing plaster and spreading, poking, and smoothing, it looks fabulous. It is amazing how much can change in a few hours. Since we had to shut down briefly for the cobbing, we decided to close for an extra day or two and do some necessary maintenance on the fire box. The protective layer of fire bricks had partially collapsed, so we pulled off the doors, and cleaned out many of the old bricks. Tomorrow we'll start laying a new (and more substantial) wall of fire bricks to protect the insulating bricks. We'll be back up and baking on Friday morning. It is hard to believe that its been over a year since we put the cob on the oven. Many thanks to our friends and cobbing experts - Pollen, Lisa, Kevin, and Margo.

Before:

After:

the day has arrived

Tomorrow is another big day - our products will finally be available at retail outlets in Nanaimo and Lantzville! Come and check us out at the Black Dog Cafe and Island Natural Market.

find us in Nanaimo!

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. It has been a very busy summer, and our market season has just ended. Baking six days a week, including 2 farmers' markets every week is tiring, but it has been a great summer.

We will be doing some maintenance work on the the oven in a week or so, and then settle in for the winter. We will continue to supply the grocery store on Gabriola, and in addition we are going to make our products available at a couple of locations in Nanaimo. The Black Dog Cafe in the heart of Lantzville will be selling and using our breads, and Island Natural Market, near Woodgrove Mall will be receiving deliveries about 3 times per week.

So never fear, you don't need to come to Gabriola to find our bread through the winter.

update

OK, so once again it has been quite a while since my last post. I finally managed to grab the camera and get a few shots of the bakery this evening. We were busy firing the oven to get it up to a nice stable temperature for tomorrow morning, making starters, etc. Today turned out to be lovely and sunny, and tomorrow is supposed to be just as warm, but with a chance of showers.

We have been busy (and so have friends of ours), and we will soon have a great new logo printed on our bread bags, and various other things. We also have a new domain (www.slowrisebakery.ca), with a web site coming soon. You can check periodically, or wait for me to post when the web site is up and running.

Have a great weekend, and I'll try to post more frequently.

a month already?

I can't believe it has already been a month since we started moving into the bakery! I just looked at the blog and realized it has been a long time since the last post. Things are going very well, and we are checking things off our list in terms of finishing little things. We are still figuring out the oven, but we seem to have a nice, consistent product. Things are picking up, and we are starting to prep for the Farmer's Market which starts in May. I will try to post some more photos soon.

set to move in!

Well, the day we were beginning to think would never arrive has come! We are planning to move into the new bakery two days from now. Our fantastic group of cobbers (seen below: Dimitri, Margo, Kevin, Paulin, Lisa, and Paul), was here this afternoon to finish off the last bit of cob to go on the dome. Once the cob has dried fully, we will still need to trim it, then put a layer of plaster on, but that will come in 2-3 weeks time.

We also put the concrete sealer on the floor over the last 3 days, so the floor now looks darker, shinier, and help reflect the light around the bakery.

Now to move the mixers and other equipment in...

growing cob

Well, the oven is finally looking like it will be done soon. We've been piling cob on the damn thing for what seems like ages, but over the last couple of days, it has really started to look great. We figure we have less than two more days of cobbing to go before it is done. Then we need to let it dry thoroughly before applying a final plaster coat of some kind.

On to more important matters... our beer fridge has moved in, the tap has been installed, and beer is flowing.

wood fired bread

Having just finished a dinner of wood-fired oven pizzas, I thought it would be a good time to publish another post. On Saturday morning we baked a few loaves of each type in the big oven, and they came out beautifully. In the photos, you can see the honey sunflower loaves in the oven, and just after they came out, then a few of the apricot ginger loaves after baking. We both figured the oven could have been hotter, but we can see now that it will indeed be lots of fun learning to bake with the new oven. The hardest part will be resisting the temptation to put anything and everything we can think of into the oven to see how it does. It still amazes me that most of the time, when you look in the oven, it just looks like a cavern, not an actual oven, and only when you stick your arm in, or watch the loaves baking do you get a sense of the amount of heat inside.