It Makes a Village

Each time I demonstrate my brick oven at an event or with friends, the term "Community Oven" comes up.
We seem to recognize that making and baking bread together is one of the activities that defines us as a civilization. At a recent Heritage Wheat Conference the correlation between farming wheat and stable civilization was made apparent.
Whereas 2nd and 3rd World countries almost take the community oven for granted, we as a first World country (here in the US) are reluctant to invest our hope that a community oven will be anything more than another onerous obligation ("It's baking night---sigh--and I'd rather be feet up in front of the flatscreen").

All doubts as to the power of baking as the unifying factor in a group gathering are dispelled when we bring our rising dough to a common oven.  Sure, you can have your own private residential oven but typically, the memories of that oven will be joined to the times when you've had a group of friends over to bake together.