Press Release

Release Date: January 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Susie Pickering

Oak Lane Day School

137 Stenton Ave, Blue Bell, PA 19422

Phone: 610-825-1055

Fax: 610-825-9288

Email: spickering@oaklanedayschool.org

Winter Tradition Features Outdoor Bake Oven at Oak Lane Day School

At Oak Lane Day School, the three and a half weeks between the long Thanksgiving weekend and Winter Break is the time of "Winterlude," a long-time tradition in which the School studies a particular subject as a community. Last year, the topic was "Rhythm," which resulted in an exuberant Winter Concert that included dance, song, the spoken word, and a few eye-opening tricks with hula-hoops and stilts. This year, the topic is "Bread." The staff of life. The study explores the commonality of bread among many, many cultures of the world, how it is made, and how it is a part of customs and celebrations. The baking of bread is of special interest, and the Oak Lane community was afforded an extraordinary opportunity when during the first week of the study Bread-Maker and Oven-Builder Dorise Kowalewski came for a three-day visit.

French by birth, Dorise has lived in New Hampshire for the past 27 years. She's been very busy during that time. When she is not maintaining her own bread-baking business at home, she is traveling abroad and sharing her skill and love of the process, which includes the actual building of outdoor ovens. Dorise has journeyed as far as New Zealand but considers the West Indies as an area of the world that truly inspires her as a humanitarian. Building bake ovens and educating people about the process in small villages where options for establishing personal independence are limited, especially for women, is a very viable way to give individuals and families the wherewithal to create safe and prosperous lives for themselves. The ovens are built to cook anything (not just to bake bread) and generally last for about 10 years. Mostly through word-of-mouth, Dorise hears of communities that are in particular need of her very special expertise, and off she goes, sometimes bringing with her a select group of assistants and sometimes traveling alone.

Dorise certainly heard the call for a bake oven from Oak Lane Day School, and while the School's community is a far cry from a small town on the island of Martinique, the "instant oven" designed and built by her with the help of her husband John and the forth, fifth, and sixth graders has greatly enriched the Winterlude study. Known as "instant" because it is temporary, the oven was built on campus with approximately 400 bricks and a couple of tiles for support that were borrowed from the artroom kiln. Ever innovative, music teacher Marlis Kraft-Zemel added a metal sheet sometimes used in school productions for sound effect thunder to be the oven door. The inside of the oven is large enough to bake about 30 medium size loaves. Loads of firewood create the blaze that heats the oven to baking temperature. When enough heat has accumulated, the fire is carefully swept out, and the inside of the oven is swabbed down with a long piece of wood wrapped in material at the end (it looks like a gargantuan q-tip!). Using the baker's traditional tool (called a "peel"), the bread loaves are placed directly on the floor of the oven, the door is shut, and some 20 to 30 minutes later the most delicious, crusty-on-the-outside and fluffy-on-the-inside, sourdough bread is done and brought out to cool and eaten with great gusto.

Wherever she goes, Dorise takes with her the two most important tools of her trade: the aforementioned peel, which is like a huge wooden spatula (she still uses the first one she ever made), and a sourdough starter (a mixture of flour, water, and yeast) that has been in existence for 180 years. Dorise is the keeper of the starter now, but she shares it freely with the people to whom she gives this wonderful gift of bread.

During the Winter Concert that marks the conclusion of Winterlude, Oak Lane Day School's bake oven was fired up one last time. Baskets of warm, fresh-out-of-the-oven bread was shared with the families and friends who came to help the students and teachers celebrate this most interesting topic and the bonds that exist within the School's community.

Oak Lane Day School Information

An independent elementary school, founded in 1916 and located in Blue Bell, Oak Lane Day School serves a diverse population of boys and girls. Oak Lane honors each child's unique individuality while fostering intellectual, creative, academic, and personal growth within a diverse community of active, engaged learners. Small class sizes and an atmosphere that encourages children to develop their academic and social skills are priorities at Oak Lane, where learning is a meaningful and joyous pursuit. Oak Lane's country-like property of 30 acres along Butler Pike and Stenton Avenue boasts a stream, pond, woods, meadows, and specimen trees as well as athletic fields and playgrounds.

Oak Lane Day School is accredited by the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools (PAIS), and is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and the Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools (ADVIS).