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You are on the [cover page] of folder [Dufferin Grove Park]Dufferin Grove Park (park ovens)
Latest news: Oven Diary
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Matza bake at Dufferin Grove Park oven 2008
Dufferin Grove Park has two outdoor wood-fired bake ovens. The first one was built in 1995, and the second one in 2000.
Here is the history of how these two ovens came to be built in a public park in Toronto, and how they were used at the start.
In 2011, park friend David Rothberg funded a portable tandoor as well. Park staff practised cooking and baking with it, and lent it out to the Thorncliffe Park women's committee until they got their own oven.
The two ovens at Dufferin Grove Park are used by city staff five days a week from June to the end of August -- two days for farmers' market bread baking, two days for public pizza-making and one day for cooking Friday Night supper. In spring and early fall, oven use goes down to 3-4 days a week, and in winter it's only one day a week. The staff's school pizza-making visits or summer camps are sometimes before or after the public pizza time, sometimes on a bread-making day. Cost for groups is $2.50 per pizza plus $60 for staffing.
Department of rules
New rule: when there's a fire in the ovens, they have to be blocked off.
Reason: so that no one can jump inside. (Really? It's nonsense. Who would want to? That's why no one tried to jump in during the first 21 years the oven was in use)
March 2016 - barriers to block the public -- but no repairs
August 2016: swing gates. But during baking, the gates stay open
Note: this new rule appears to be modeled on the Riverdale Farm oven rules. That oven no longer has public use.
Improvements
Bake oven tile at Dufferin subway station
Oven Construction
- The Big Oven (not so detailed)
- The Small Oven (very detailed)
Bake oven building costs:
Dufferin Grove Park, Big Oven, 1995:
$5,783.29 Nigel Dean (labour and materials)
$2,144.82 additional materials and supplies
Total cost: $7928.11
Dufferin Grove, smaller oven, 2000:
$636 oven foundation
$1572.69 building supplies for actual oven
$1519 Alan Scott fee (including teaching for workshop participants)
$1139.77 materials and labour for housing
Total cost: $4867.46
Plus one weekend of rotating donated labour (from workshop participants).
Christie Pits, 2000
Total oven materials for Christie oven: $3086.90
(Oven built completely with donated labour)
The first people who used the park oven, 1995
Dave Miller
Dave Miller was Nigel Dean's helper in building the first Dufferin Grove oven. He also had a diploma as a pastry chef, but he wasn't baking when we knew him. The first pizza day we ever did, Dave made the dough and helped the St.Mary's High School students to bake it. That day was pretty clumsy, with flour and toppings all over the place. But we had to start somewhere, and we got more graceful and better organized as time went on.
Kathryn
Quita Jane and Annick
Kathryn and her family moved to Havelock Street in Toronto, from a farm where Kathryn had a small bakery. Kathryn had already begun her career as a writer, but she still liked to bake and showed us how.
Quita had a wood-fired oven in Collingwood, and came down to give us some tips. Annick lived right beside the park and showed us her French baking style and gardening style.
Repair and operating issues
Smoke damage to insulation and roof
During the fall/winter of 2011/2012 the Dufferin Grove bakers noticed occasional little bit of smoke curling out from under the oven's roof overhang. In April, when the snow was gone, they got a carpenter to take off the shingles and open the bottom part of the roof where the smoke seemed to be. Indeed the roof insulation was blackened in places. The bakers pulled out that insulation and replaced it with new insulation. There seemed to be no actual fire damage, and there was no effect on the baking. The carpenter put fresh plywood over the spot and re-shingled the roof. Since then there has been no more smoke leaking out.
Oven builder Alex Chernov suggested to us that there have been design improvements since our oven was built. He said the when the insulation is packed in like in the Dufferin Grove oven, over time the heat communicates from the oven dome through the insulation to the wooden roof.
the blackened insulation near the front was replaced
the plywood was replaced
Contacts:
Jutta Mason: (history, website) juttamason@gmail.com
Content last modified on August 11, 2024, at 09:17 PM EST