Saint Paul Bread Club
We knead to bake!
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Latest News
We had 37 members for the Soup du jour meeting on January 30, 2010.
The next quarterly meeting is the “Other Bread” meeting on March 27, 2010.
Other Links:
Home of the Saint Paul Bread Club (SPBC)
This is the official web site of the Saint Paul Bread Club.
We are also on Facebook, but that is not our official home.
About the SPBC
Membership in the club is free and open to anyone interested in bread. Bread bakers with any level of experience are welcome. The SPBC charges no fees or dues. We are always looking for volunteers to work in the interest of the club.
Dan “Klecko” McGleno founded the Saint Paul Bread Club in 2003 to share his knowledge of breads and baking with home bread bakers. In 2003 we met in the Community Room of the Mississippi Market Co-op. Starting in 2004, we have had our quarterly meetings at the St. Agnes Baking Company.
We are the largest bread club we know of, at least in the sense of being a group of individuals with a common interest in bread. We have been listed as high as first place on both Google and Yahoo if you search for “bread club”. (There are other “bread clubs” that we have seen, but these are typically associated with customer rewards programs at retail bakeries.)
SPBC in the Media
2009
There was a video feature about our work building ovens broadcast by our local television station, KARE-11 on August 18, 2009.
It is on-line thanks to their archiving of their “Extras” segments.
This link provides access to the feature itself.
2010
The SPBC was featured in the February issue of Relish magazine, which is a food magazine inserted in a number of newspapers all over the US. The main story appeared on page 8 of the print edition as a story named The Gospel of Bread with a link to some pictures of the 2008 bread and soup meeting.
About a half-dozen people around the US have contacted me about starting bread clubs because of that article. (See below for information aobut starting a bread club.)
Meetings
Quarterly Meetings - The bread club meets approximately quarterly at the St. Agnes Baking Company, 644 Olive Street in downtown Saint Paul, two blocks east of I-35E and just north of University Avenue.
Monthly Meetings - The bread club also has subgroups that meet approximately monthly around the Twin Cities area. (We call these subgroups slices and we often refer to these subgroup meetings as slice meetings.)
We have two meetings in Saint Paul, one in Eden Prairie, and one St. Louis Park. If there is enough interest in a new meeting location, and a volunteer (or a committee of volunteers) to lead it, we will gladly create a new monthly meeting in hopes of serving another geographical subset of SPBC members.
We are exploring starting a new monthly meeting in northeast Minneapolis at the Eastside Food Co-op. If you live near NE Mpls, and you are interested in attending a monthly meeting, contact me and I will start organizing a list of interested people. Those are the people who will decide what day of the month to hold their meeting.
Use the 2010 MEETINGS AND EVENTS tab above to see the schedule for future monthly and quarterly meetings and other SPBC-related events.
On-Line Forum
If you can’t get to a quarterly meeting or one of the monthly meetings (or you live out of town), you can still participate with bread club members by joining and contributing to the on-line forum (there’s a link to it on the right).
Send e-mail to me to let me know that you want to participate in the forum, and I will register you. (Manual registration is required because of the number of spammers who tried to register when automatic registration was enabled.)
Other Bread Clubs
Tell Me If You Know of Any
If you know about any other bread clubs, we would be overjoyed to know about them. Please send e-mail to me and I’ll add the other club’s information to our list.
Starting a Bread Club
If you would like to start a bread club, we would be glad to be of any help we can. Please send e-mail to me and I’ll help you however we can.
As of February, 2010, I have been contacted by people interested in forming bread clubs in several states and other countries.
I have started a board in our on-line forum for the discussion of this topic. If you would like to participate, send e-mail to me and I’ll register you on the forum.
Klecko
Klecko wrote a chapter about forming your own bread club in the cookbook that is very useful.
The people at the Minnesota Historical Society Press suggested that I put this wording on the site:
“For information on how to start your own bread club, check out the chapter by master bread baker, Klecko, on this topic in the book Baking with the St. Paul Bread Club.” This is on pages 144 and 145 in the book.
Kim Ode
Kim Ode has this to say about starting your own bread club:
I encourage people to think about a bread club the way they think about a book club. Gather people around a common interest and let them help guide the direction as to topics and approach. Bread by bread? Cuisine by cuisine? Flour by flour? Etc.
If you don’t have a welcoming commercial bakery, consider the other large kitchens around you, such as community centers and church kitchens. Chances are, they’re going unused a night a month, or a night a quarter. If your group aims to be large, that’s necessary. If you want a smaller group, a private home may be all you’ll need.
The key is to keep it simple. Invite guest experts, but also discover the expertise within the group – or welcome the chance to become experts together in the best way possible: baking again and again.”
Ovens
We are on a Quest for Ovens. Members of the bread club have baked at ovens in Historical Ft. Snelling, and participated in building a clay oven at Gale Woods Farm Park.
We also built stacked-brick ovens at Gale Woods, although these have now been removed.
We are especially interested in hearing about ovens where members of the community can come and bake. Please let me know if you are aware of any brick or clay ovens in operation, but especially ones where we can bake.
In 2008, there were at least four new ovens built. If you have an outdoor brick or clay oven that you are willing to let SPBC members visit or bake at, please let us know.