Winter Baking

Posted by Leah on Dec 21, 2010 in MABELLEarts

MABELLEarts is thrilled to welcome outdoor baker Yo Utano to the Mabelle Park!  Yo first learned the art of outdoor oven baking at Dufferin Grove Park, where she is now employed as a baker.   Yo came to Canada in December 2004.  While living in Japan, she and her sister dreamed of having an outdoor oven of their own.

Yo is a part of a two-year project researching outdoor communal ovens as part of the Centre for Local Research into Public Space (CELOS) an organization started by park maven Jutta Mason.  Jutta is the woman responsible for many of the amazing activities and developments happening at Dufferin Grove Park.  We are pleased to be building connections with this exciting project.

At MABELLEarts we tend to do things a wee bit backwards, so its only now (in the depths of winter) that we find ourselves baking regularly in our cob oven.  Our beautiful oven was a project instigated by MABELLEartist James Davis who has spent a lot of time learning with various groups including the City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon.  Over 50 Mabelle residents assisted James in the building of our oven – as well as two rebuildings when the oven was vandilized.

Baking bread outdoors in the winter is brand new to me and feels a bit like being a frontier woman.  I know next to nothing about baking, so having Yo here to mentor us all in the art of the outdoor oven is a real treat, not to mention a necessity.  The bread we are making will be a part of a very exciting event we are hosting this February, as part of the City of Toronto’s Winterlicious.

Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

Over and Out!
Find out more about the Centre for Local Research into Public Space: http://celos.ca/wiki/wiki.php

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