Really BIG Wood-fired Brick Ovens

In Lauren Collins' "Bread Winner" article in the New Yorker December 3, 2012, she gives us a well-developed portrait of French bread making by the Poilane family of Paris.

It's worth reading.

The description of the 'manufactory' designed and built by Lionel Poilane, will delight proponents of wood-fired artisan bread.  Imagine "Twelve airy bakehouses-- each equipped with two ovens, and named after an important figure in the history of bread-- radiate like spokes from the core."

Whew! As a brick oven builder and baker, I am vicariously intoxicated by the image of "a sea of wood engulfed the room's perimeter, lapping the ceiling, which was twenty feet high."

As I said, read the article.  It may well be a model for the kind of bread production that can occur when quality, care, and an avid consuming community (Paris!) get it.