Kitchener group builds community cob oven

KITCHENER — Imagine cooking fire-roasted pizza or fresh bread in a clay oven like families did in bygone days.

You can fire up your own meals soon if you live near the Mill-Courtland Community Centre.

A team of community groups mixed clay and laid bricks on a sunny Saturday morning to build a community cob oven for everyone to enjoy.

“We wanted to build something everyone can use,” said Julie Allen-Gilbert, chair of the Highland-Stirling Community Group that is spearheading the build.

“It’s going back to basics, the idea of breaking bread together,” she added.

About 10 people worked in the grassy patch behind the centre at the corner of Stirling Avenue and Mill Street.

The oven was funded through a grant from the Mennonite Central Committee.

Nearby groups Mill-Courtland Neighbourhood Association and Cedar Hill Community Group also pitched in to help with the community project.

A wooden structure was built to shelter the large oven, which is shaped like a dome with an open section to place food in. Cob is a natural building material that dates back thousands of years. It’s made of clay, sand and straw to bind structures together.

“Most cultures would have an oven like this,” said Alfred Rempel of the cob oven committee at Transition K-W, a local non-profit committed to sustainability.

Rempel has a personal cob oven in his own backyard. Along with other members of Transition K-W, he has helped build community ovens locally and as far away as Sauble Beach.

The traditional-style oven can be used to bake loaves of bread, naan, pita bread, pizzas and can even be used to roast meat.

Allen-Gilbert said community members wanted to make the green space at Mill-Courtland Community Centre more communal.

“This is a very multicultural community,” she said.

A container garden was built in another corner of the little park to teach neighbours how to grow their own backyard food.

“It’s about food sustainability,” she said. “We want to let people be able to do things themselves.”

Allen-Gilbert said the community group is still sorting out the details of how to make the oven available to the public.

Some ideas include hosting workshops to teach people how to use the oven. It may also be available on a rental basis.

“There is really no danger to using this,” she said. “It also makes very little smoke.”

But the process of lighting the oven and stoking the firewood is meticulous and requires a trained hand.

Members of the Cherry Park Neighbourhood Association were there to watch and learn. They hope to build a cob oven in Raddatz Park between Gage Avenue and Cherry Street in Kitchener.

Cob ovens are legal in Kitchener but are currently not allowed in Waterloo.

There are existing community cob ovens at Little City Farm and Queen’s Green Community Garden in downtown Kitchener.