Warren Lee Cohen

Advent, Channukah, Divali, Christmas and Kwanza

In the spirit of this wonderful stream of festivals of light , I have been setting my intentions for the coming year, which I hope will be filled with fruitful meetings, growth, play and a deepening sense of love filled work. My work educating Waldorf teachers at the Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto is proving dynamic and deeply engaging. I am fortunate to have also  been invited to offer a number of shorter workshops and presentations in Canada and Brazil. These help me to create a nice balance of work and play and allow me to cultivate my many disperate interests such as Waldorf Education, baking bread, building bread ovens, inner development and sculpture. Come join the fun.

Monday I was warmly welcomed at work with a gift of a 2  1/2 kg  cotton sack of freshly milled, organic Red Fife wheat, a local variety that has been grown in Ontario since the 1840’s. This grain, originally brought over from the Ukraine, was successfully grown across the wheat belt of Canada until the early 1900’s when it was supplanted by other varietals. Renowned for heartiness, flavour and nutrition, Red Fife is experiencing a revival and is now sought after by artisan bakers. My first sponge is rising as I type this post. I look forward to feeling how this dough is to knead by hand and ultimately to savor its crust and crumb. Anson Mills has some helpful information about working with this high gluten wheat. Thanks Lucas!

More good feedback from my first sourdough bread baking workshop in Canada. Many kindergartens at the Toronto Waldorf School are now using natural leavening processes to make more nutritious and digestible breads for the young children. This is such an exciting outcome from a one day workshop.

I am pleased to announce my first baking workshop in Canada.  Come and join me if you can.

We’ve landed and set up house in Richmond Hill, just north of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. Our garden is filled with wild flowers and large patches of raspberries. I am directing the Teacher Education Program at the Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto. Luciana is knitting up a storm and taking care of our lovely little girls.

The sourdough starter made the long journey from England to Brazil and at last to Canada. It was a bit sluggish at first, but soon sprung back to life. And the wheat, the hard Canadian wheat is a pleasure to work with, much more elastic than what I had grown used to in England. Tomorrow I am going to consult on my first new bread oven project. A workshop is soon to follow.

A brave group of 18 oven builders gathered at Taurus Crafts to build two bread ovens in one weekend! The first oven was a quickly built  ”festival oven” that we fired up on the very same day we built it. We dried it completely on the second day and made delicious pizza in it. This oven had walls about 4 inches thick with neither door nor chimney and stood on a temporary and mobile plinth.

The second oven was crafted to last with a collaboratively sculpted exterior, oaken door and oven walls about twice as thick. This oven will work well for both pizza and many loads of loaf bread and had all of our creative energies pressed into its outer shell. Many thanks to the fine folks at Taurus Crafts who helped organize this exciting weekend. Participant comments are included below the photographs.

Dear Warren,
I want to say a very belated thank you for your wonderful course at Taurus Crafts . I was completely blown away by your heartfelt approach. You really communicated your passion and deep understanding of bread making, which has helped me return to my baking ready to (tentatively) abandon my recipes and start feeling my way into the unknown. I’m going to suggest the current class 3 maybe helps build an oven in our garden.

Another participant who went home to build another bread oven commented:
Hi Warren — here are the photos — We had a really great day doing it – superb weather – good friends and several now want to build their own — and we are the experts!!!
Many thanks for your inspiration.

Here are a few pictures (thanks to Wendy Cook) from our conference and workshop together at Embercombe in Devon. Together we focused on the evolution of human nutrition and its connection with human consciousness. And of course we got our hands in the dough and baked some beautiful loaves in their wood-fired oven.

Thought you might like to know we are baking regularly again, have spread your starter far and wide, and my daughter Mel ran a workshop recently ; unexpectedly Brian Goodwin and Cristel came and Mel taught Brian to bake – he had never done it before and threw himself into the tactile aspect, finding it very satisfying!
I hope you and your family enjoy your travels. Thankyou again for the workshop.
Love, jenny

A group of us came from England to Fabrizio Rossi’s beautiful villa in southern Italy. Each day we baked bread in the old bread oven built into the side of the villa. Then in the afternoons we each worked on one painting for the whole stay. We painted in stages that reflected the process of transformation that the bread goes through from milling, mixing with water, kneading, allowing time to rise, kneading and shaping and at last baking in a fiery oven. Each step is another process of transformation that turns simple substances into life sustaining and enahancing nourishment.

This bread oven was designed and built in the Autumn with the help of three sculptors. The form emerged as we were building it to try to suit its function and environment. It has a privileged location right outside the kitchen window and next to the main entrance. It greets them every time they come home.

There was an  badly cracked, old bread oven in this magical play-garden. With the enthusiastic help of Nuno and Stewart , we recycled the clay from the old oven, added more sand and straw and rebuilt a new oven atop the same cotswold stone base. The shape developed as we worked the cob. After a few days working and contemplating a temple form seemed to emerge, a temple for the transformation of bread. This is now a vital part of the children’s play area

I want to offer special thanks to Shipton Mill who have generously donated organic flour for my workshops, classes and events. Quality ingredients make all the difference.