All Over Albany

The Grand Street community bread oven

Where the neighborhood comes when it wants to get fired up.

Chew on this: In Albany's Grand Street neighborhood, they're not just breaking bread with their neighbors, they're also baking bread.

In a formerly vacant lot, volunteers built a communal bread oven, known as the Bread Oven Gathering Space. The large outdoor oven, which stands about five-and-a-half feet tall and is about three feet wide, is made of cob -- a clay mixture -- and sits on a pedestal of stacked stone. It's covered by a wooden pergola, with a few carved stone benches next to it. Surrounded by the beginnings of summer gardens, it's like a little oasis in the middle of the city.

Community residents and members of the Albany Free School had long wanted to turn the vacant lot into a gathering place. Jonah Vitale-Wolff of Hudson Valley Natural Building led the project, with help from local organizations and many volunteers. Money was raised through grants, and construction began in the summer of 2006. In spring 2007, an opening ceremony was held, complete with a blessing from a local Buddhist nun.

The oven gets fired up several times a month by rotating community members, who are welcome to use it as long as they have been shown how to do so safely and properly. Vitale-Wolff says says there's a right way to fire up the oven -- which isn't hard, but takes practice -- and many wrong ways to do it.

You can see the oven for yourself by heading over to the corner of Grand and Wilbur Streets. Although it's primarily used by the immediate community, Vitale-Wolff says they definitely want to invite other people, too. Anyone who's interested can contact him at jonah@hvnb.net for more information.

Workshops using the oven were also held at last fall's Albany Skill Share.

You can also check out this online slide show of the oven.

(Thanks Stephen!)