Community Bread Bake

We will be holding a community bread bake at Meadow Orchard Project on the 2nd November!

Cob Oven Firing & Community Baking Fundraiser

Date Saturday 2/10/24

Firing from 12.00
Baking 14.00 – 18.00

Suggested event donation £5.00 in aid of twinning our rebooted compost loo with another dry toilet out there in the world! See http://www.toilettwinning.org for more details. Every toilet twin celebrates a new toilet for a family living in a low income country.

We will be firing the Meadow Orchard Cob Oven to celebrate the Autumn season and offer opportunity for members and volunteers to see how this wood fired oven works, and of course to bake bread cookies cakes and maybe even a casserole and a few spuds and roots to enjoy later on in the evening!

Hopefully it will be dry and we can enjoy an evening social around the firepit with some hot drinks and cob baked goodies to eat.

How can you help?

So this event relies on you bringing stuff to bake. Now you may be asking what is realistic to bake in ye olde oven? Good question! We suggest you either bring bread loaf dough raised in a tin or we can bake loaves/rolls freestyle on the oven floor, or then something tasty like cookies/flapjacks in a tray that are easy to get in and out of the oven.

There is an old tradition of community baking where the one oven is used by everyone and this still goes on around the world today. Firing an oven takes time and money why not share the load and cost and do everyones baking all at the same time!

Oven story

The MOP oven was built on site around 2012 and is still going strong today. As you know it lives under a roof to keep it dry from the rain and stands on a raised brick plinth to keep it dry down below. Made of subsoil rich in clay dug out here on site add in some sand and straw and you have the old building material called cob – mixed here by many volunteers hands and feet and built up by hand around a giant sand dome form. When its dry enough you cut your door hole into the cob drag out the sand and hey presto you got a big old oven to cook with. Simple ideas really are the best!

As the nights are drawing in and chilly bring a torch to get around – a blanket – your own mugs for hot drinks and a song or story to share.

Best wishes,

The Meadow Orchard team