(Baie-Saint-Paul) A traditional bread oven to create connections: this is the successful gamble of a community organization in Baie-Saint-Paul, which will hold its first activities there this summer.
With its rounded shape, black cast iron doors and hemlock shingle roof, the new artisanal bread oven installed in front of the entrance to the Pro-Santé Community Center does not go unnoticed.
“We can really see the enthusiasm! When we built it last fall, we had a lot of tourists and locals come by, many of them wanted to know what it would be used for, if there were workshops,” says the center’s general manager, Annie Bouchard.
There will be workshops every Friday in July and August. A baking teacher, who teaches in Quebec and who lives in Baie-Saint-Paul in the summer, spontaneously offered to give training.
The community center, which serves the entire MRC of Charlevoix, obtained a $9,000 grant to finance the oven and the equipment needed to start using it (thermometer and accessories, wood, ingredients, etc.).
The oven was built by a craftsman from Estrie, with a little help from local volunteers.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
Annie Bouchard, general director of the Pro-Santé Community Center
We did some tests, pizza lunches with the employees, so that everyone was able to heat it. The important thing is that the inside is white. When your oven is at the right temperature, your pizza is cooked in 45 seconds!
Annie Bouchard, general director of the Pro-Santé Community Center
The menu of the workshops remains to be determined, with the baker and depending on the interest of the local population.
“It’s not just bread that you can bake, but pies, tarts, stews. You can do anything,” enthuses M.me Bouchard.
“It’s so good, cooking in a wood-fired oven, it reminds me of my youth,” retired people from the village told him.
The center, which already offers several services to seniors, plans to add intergenerational activities around its oven, where seniors paired with elementary or secondary school children will make pizzas or bread.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
Making bread balls at the Pro-Santé Community Center
The oven could also be integrated into cooking workshops, the surplus of which goes to the centre’s food bank, as is already done with primary school pupils.
This will be welcome: the food bank’s clientele has more than tripled in the past two years, with nearly 550 people benefiting from its services in 2023-2024 (compared to 152 two years earlier).
“We are really in the city centre of Baie-Saint-Paul, so we are also going to do community batches by appealing to the population: “Today we are starting the bread oven, if you have things to bake, bring them!” ” announces M.me Bouchard.
The oven will also be available for rental for small groups who would like to organize an activity there.
Bread and bonds
The La mie commune bread oven, inaugurated in the summer of 2019 in the Lac-Saint-Charles district of Quebec City, shows the potential of such equipment. It is located in a park, a stone’s throw from the community organization RAFAL (Ressources Actions Familles à Lac-Saint-Charles).
PHOTO PROVIDED BY RAFAL
The community oven The common crumb
RAFAL supported the project, but “it is a bread oven self-managed by citizens,” emphasizes its director, Nancy Desharnais. It was an individual, Ludovic Lorrin, who led the project, in the construction of which “about twenty families” were involved.
These are [les citoyens] who recruit, who promote, who create conviviality around the oven. They make 100% citizen batches, where people come with their food.
Nancy Desharnais, director of RAFAL
RAFAL, for its part, organizes midday batches during the summer, to keep in touch with its participants during the period when its collective kitchens are closed. A parent-child bread-making activity in June and a corn roast cooked in the oven in August are notably on the schedule.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY RAFAL
An activity at the La Mie Commune oven, in 2022
“We are here to bring the educational, relational aspect, to create links with people in order to, precisely, lead them towards food security activities, or food autonomy, which could help some people,” explains Mme Desharnais.
A festival of the oven
They are made of clay, cast iron and wood, but they have the effect of a magnet: aware of the power of attraction of the traditional bread oven, several municipalities have equipped themselves with such equipment in recent years.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE MUNICIPALITY OF L’ANSE-SAINT-JEAN
Promotional image of the Bread Oven Festival, showing nearly fifty ovens located in the territory of L’Anse-Saint-Jean.
The village of L’Anse-Saint-Jean, in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, has three of them. “At the presbytery, we have a communal oven, that is to say, it is communal, that people can use, a bit like in Europe,” says the municipality’s development director, Bernard Larouche.
In addition to its two other installations, at Mont Edouard and at Camping de L’Anse, the municipality of 1,332 inhabitants has listed around fifty private ovens on its territory.
“A lot of people have bread ovens, it’s a distinctive trademark, because of the history, I would say,” says the development director. L’Anse has therefore created a Bread Oven Festival, which will be in its sixth edition next September. Last year’s program included a rally to see 37 traditional ovens and a community dinner where dishes were served simmered during the day by four oven owners.