The project...

These days, I am reflecting on this baking barter education project. It is over half way done and it seems that there has been a lot of progress, yet it is only just getting it's momentum going!
The learning contract that I wrote proposes four different learning objectives one of which is to learn to teach breadmaking by conducting two bread making classes. I still need to have my second baking class, which is winding into reality with three interested students in the neighborhood and more in Piha and Auckland. I held the first class at the beginning of the quarter and it was well attended by eight Slow Foods members and a couple of local trade customers. I have two more classes in mind and am eager to refine the process and get more recipe hand out materials organized. Bread is everywhere! If I get the teaching down, I can take it as a business, should I wander to another locale.

Other parts of the project involve an interview with a woman named Tracy Marc who has traded in both informal and formal bartering networks here in New Zelanad for for decades,to use an existing barter web site to conduct a trade, to read 10 academic articles on cashless systems and barter with plenty of documentation of the whole works.
The bakery took more shape yesterday with a new prep table, made from a three inch slice of a giant macrocarpa tree. This involved a trade for sanding and now sits in it's glory in the Greenhouse Daylight Bakery. I call it Greenhouse Daylight Bakery, by the way, because we happen to live in a green house and, the bakery is in a greenhouse space and green has the obvious eco-affirmative connotations that a wood fired-electricity free operation can capitalize on. The daylight part is because without electricity, one must operate it in the daylight hours(sometimes I cheat and use a kerosene lamp, so I can finish up)
The oven is performing well as I work to devise the best techniques. Since I modified the oven, myself, with stream injection- no one can tell me exactly what will work (or wont). I have to learn through mistakes and reading. An Italian job, the Fontana oven is very efficient and uses only about 2 kilos (about 5 lbs for you Americans) of wood to bake breads at 350 degrees Celsius for an hour or so.

Today I made my first wood fired ciabatta, which I found all kinds of fault with, but Jordan swept them off to school and sold them all anyway. It was the first use of the lovely macrocarpa counter/bench. Here are some photos of bread production today. I am writing a piece about one of my neighborhood customers, A fellow named Dean Buchanan who trades me paintings and money and even wood splitting. He seems to be my most exuberant trader and I am grateful for that. It's great to have the baking business since New Zealanders can, generally, be a little insular. A girl needs a mission, way out here in Karekare, anyway.