GRAND ISLE, Maine — The perfect traditional Quebec mud bread oven should look like, well, the north end of a south-bound beaver.
So, with that in mind, several St. John Valley residents gathered at the Grand Isle Historical Society Saturday to build one.
“From what I read, the old ovens were shaped like a beaver’s butt,” Leah Cook of Grand Isle said, as she placed wet bricks around a frame.
“Why build a mud bread oven? Because we can,” project coordinator Dave Wylie said, as he supervised the process. “A lot of our ancestors are of Quebecois descent and this is the way they would have done it.”
In the early days of Acadian settlements in the St. John Valley, according to Gerald Soucy of the Grand Isle Historical Society, residents used clay from local mines to construct dome-shaped, outdoor wood-fired bread ovens.
Historically, building the oven was a social, messy process. The clay is placed in troughs with water and softened by kneading it with bare feet, much how grapes are stomped to make wine. Hay is added as a binder before the mud is slapped on by hand to a dome-shaped frame of woven alder branches.
The oven dries over time and is then fired at a high temperature — like a piece of pottery — before it can be used to bake anything from bread to pizza, said Soucy.
As volunteers shoveled dirt and poured water into square, wooden troughs, others — shoes kicked off and pant legs rolled up — stomped to mix it into mud.
From there, shovel-loads of the grayish mud were dumped onto tables, where more volunteers kneaded hay into it to create loaf-shaped bricks. They were then set row by row around the frame of the oven.
“I just came to observe this and then got talked into trying it,” Stan Albert of St. Agatha said, as he kneaded his loaf of mud. “It’s kind of fun, and of course, I’ve never molded mud and hay into bricks before.”
Working with his own small heap of mud next to Albert, Brian Bouley laughed. “A lot of us have never done this before.”
The laughter and teasing among the volunteers was nonstop. Wylie said fostering community spirit was a big part of the oven-making process.
“I like the idea that it takes a village to make the things that make your food [and] your sustenance,” Wylie said. “Most families had bread ovens, and it was a family affair. But in this instance here, we saw it as a community project.”
The frame of the oven was made by bending and weaving alder branches, which had been gathered by Cook from her Grand Isle farm.
Those branches were woven like a basket, Wylie explained, then covered with burlap to complete the mold. The first time the oven is lit, the branches and burlap simply burn away.
Cook said it took a bit work to manipulate those branches into the desired shape.
“You really have to bend and work the alder branches to get them flexible,” she said. “But once you do that for awhile, you can form them into the curved shape you want.”
Looking up from his brick-making, Albert said the project was a connection to his past.
“My ancestors were from Quebec,” he said. “They must have done this [and] when you think about it, every culture does what it has to do to create the things they need like these ovens.”
Holding up a newly formed brick, Albert did speculate that straw might have been a better ingredient than the hay they were using.
“I think straw holds together better and the hay just sort of rambles on,” he said, then chuckled. “Of course, I am making that up.”
Over at the mud trough, Luc Roy of Madawaska was mixing dirt and water as the mud squoozed up between his toes.
“Leah [Cook] was talking about this and invited me to come and get muddy,” he said with a laugh. “I really didn’t know what she was talking about, but this is a really great community event where you get to build something and kind of bond at the same time — in more ways than one.”
Once complete, the oven will be covered by a temporary wooden structure and allowed to dry for about a month. Wylie said he hopes the first loaf of bread will be ready in October.
