A local council used its loaf, spent a little dough, and brought a community together, reports Richard Cornish.
BY THE banks of the Murray River, in the shade of an old river gum, stands a wood-fired oven.
A puff of smoke signals that Michael Laubli has fired the large brick oven, feeding it with red gum logs from the back of his ute.
The following afternoon, when the fire has reduced to a bed of ash and embers, Albury-Wodonga locals and visitors arrive with pots, pans, tins and trays filled with the food they will cook in the Albury community wood-fired oven under the supervision of Laubli, official oven co-ordinator. Everyone is welcome.
"The idea came from Albury City Council's cultural development officer Narelle Vogel, who saw a picture on a Canadian website and said, 'I want one of these for Albury'," says project co-ordinator Chelsea McLaren from Hume Murray Food Bowl, a group representing and promoting local food and wine producers.
A $15,000 State Government grant kicked off the project and wood-oven "guru" Alan Scott was brought in to help design and build it.
The decision to sink tens of thousands of dollars into a great block of brick and concrete in local parkland was not without its critics, however.
"There are some people who think the idea of building the oven was a complete waste of money," says Hume Murray Food Bowl's Noelle Quinn.
Thomas Moritz, a King Valley farmer and baker, who also worked on the oven concurs. "When we were building it we had people coming past us and giving a lot of negative comments - that it would be vandalised, or covered in graffiti," Moritz says.
"But when you build an oven like this it has an incredible effect upon the community. People gather round," he says. "They like to watch. Everyone wants to come and help."
Laubli has supervised every firing of the oven since its official launch last October by Mildura chef Stefano de Pieri.
"We've had hundreds of pizzas, loaves, quiches, focaccias, biscuits, roasts and lasagnas," he says. "People wait for their food to cook, then eat it in the park."
Laubli explains how a typical community day progresses: "When we start cooking the oven is around 400-300 degrees," he says.
"Because it's so hot we start with really quick dishes like pizza and Lebanese bread; they are in and out in a flash. Then it's time to bake breads. After three hours the temperature drops to around 275 degrees and that is when the roasting starts."
Laubli trained with baker Moritz (Boonderoo Farm Bakery) and he juggles the requirements of a vast array of dishes and their cooking times with ease, opening and closing the door to regulate the oven's temperature. "Yes, I am under the pump," he says. "But the adrenalin buzz helps you to co-ordinate and perform."
The oven has already been the focus for several successful events. On Australia Day more than 600 people gathered in Hovel Tree Park to watch an open-air screening of the hit Australian film Kenny.
The local slow food group fed hundreds of them with potatoes, pizza and scones baked in the community oven.
The profits made that day have helped fund an education program co-ordinated by staff from Albury-Wodonga's Slow Food convivia. Last week the first lesson of a children's food-education project was held at the oven - year 3 students from Wodonga Primary School kneaded and formed dough, baking bread and free-form pizzas," says Slow Food Albury Wodonga's Margaret Benbow.
"They'll make their own choices of toppings and taste something good, not like the muck they serve from those American foreign chains," she says.
In April a similar event will be held for year 3 students from the Albury Public School, who will make scones, bake them in the oven then serve them to a group of elderly citizens.
Benbow is a keen user of the wood-fired oven and is particularly smitten with the flavour it imparts to her food.
"There is an intangible factor that happens to food cooked in a wood-fired oven," she explains, "we coated a loin of pork with sea-salt, black pepper, garlic, rosemary and sage, and roasted it in the oven with more garlic, shallots and potatoes. The flavours were deeper and more developed than if I had cooked it in a gas or electric oven," she says.
But the locals end up with more than just a good supper. Neighbours and strangers sit together and talk about the food they are cooking, their family and other community matters.
"There is a real engagement that happens around that oven," Benbow says. "We would like to see other councils around the state, and around the country, do something brilliant like this."
Albury Community Wood Fired Oven, Hovel Tree Park, adjacent to the Albury Swim Centre. Next firing is on Saturday. Open for baking and roasting from 2pm-7pm. Dough for bread and pizzas is available from Valentine's Bake House, (02) 6021 6135.
