Bread ministry reaches well beyond the walls of the church

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Community oven is 'on' at Hamline United Methodist; community pizza parties planned in July and August

Story and photos by MARGIE O’LOUGHLIN

There’s a new addition to the Hamline United Methodist Church at 1514 Englewood Ave.: a robust, brick community oven that was completed last year with the help of more than 100 volunteers. According to church member and oven spokesperson Mark Ireland, “The football team from Hamline University helped haul concrete, church members and plenty of neighbors who didn’t belong to the Church rolled up their sleeves and pitched in. There were people working on site 5-6 days a week last May and June. Then it took the bread ministry team the rest of the summer to figure out how to operate the thing.”

Community Oven 01Photo left: The handsome community oven at Hamline United Methodist Church takes 10-12 hours to rise to its baking temperature of 900+ degrees. Made of high-temperature concrete, clay bricks and wool insulation, the traditional design keeps the high heat on the inside. On the outside, it’s barely even warm to the touch.

The oven is in full swing now. It’s the one and only community oven in St. Paul, and there are just a handful of them in Minneapolis. Sharing a community oven was a common practice across Europe until the last century, and it’s still the way bread is baked in many parts of the Middle East and North Africa.

“We got to wondering,” Ireland said, “what it would be like to build a community oven in this space, in this time when everyone seems to feel so hurried? Feeding people by baking in a brick oven is SLOW; there’s nothing instantly gratifying about it. We need to haul 3-4 wheelbarrows of wood for starters; then we have to stoke the fire for 10-12 hours to get the oven to baking temperature.”

Community Oven 02Photo right: Life-long Hamline Midway resident and bread baker Mark Ireland with his daughter Kathleen. He said, “The real community building happens when people are hauling and throwing wood together, or standing around waiting for the bread to come out of the oven.”

Hamline United Methodist Church received a grant from the White Bear Lake United Methodist Church to build their oven. Bryce Johnson, a long-time pastor at the White Bear Lake church, had an oven built some years ago for his congregation. The oven was so successful as a tool for community building that the White Bear Lake church created a grant, which any Methodist church in Minnesota could apply for.

Ireland explained, “We won primarily because of our unique relationship with Hamline University, our active inner-city neighborhood and the close proximity of neighborhood elementary schools. “We literally have the chance to impact thousands of people with this project,” he said.

There are two events coming up this summer to taste what the community oven can do, and to savor the company of neighbors. On Wed., July 20, free wood-fired pizza will be served at 6pm with the movie “The Love Bug” showing at dusk. On Wed., Aug. 17, free wood-fired pizza will be served at 6pm with the movie “Shaun the Sheep” showing at dusk. Bring your own blanket, lawn chairs, salads and sides.

“For a pizza party,” Ireland said, “we heat the oven to almost 1,000 degrees, and it stays warm for 3-4 days afterward. It only takes 90 seconds to bake a pizza, but it takes a long time to get to that baking point. As the oven cools, it’s possible to bake other lower-temperature breads. The first to go in are the ciabatta or other artisanal loaves, then the sweet breads. We can bake 30-40 loaves of bread at a time.”

If you’re interested in learning how to build your own portable oven, David S. Cargo (one of the founding members of the St. Paul Bread Club) will offer a class at HUMC on Sat., Aug. 20, from 9am–3:30pm. The fee for the class is $80. The class covers choosing an outdoor oven site, preparing the ground, and all of the skills needed to construct an oven. Each student will receive plans for three different sizes of ovens, a materials list, and bread recipes to use with their wood fired oven. For more information or to register, contact David S. Cargo at escargo@skypoint.com.

For more information on baking events or to learn about baking your own bread in the community oven, email the church office at hamlinechurchum@gmail.com with the subject line “bread oven request.”

Ireland concluded, “The community oven is not an outreach to increase our church membership. It’s a way to bring people together in the neighborhood who might not otherwise get to know each other.”

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