Opening up a Bakery at Burning Man 2018
For Burning Man 2018 our camp built Black Rock Bakery, a fully operational bakery, in the middle of the desert. We trucked in three ovens, two fridges, six mixers, 1,500lbs of ingredients, 700lbs of propane, the actual structure and an entire kitchen setup. With the help of thirty volunteers we operated a neighborhood bakery in our little temporary hometown of Black Rock City in the middle of the French Quarter village.
We did the unimaginable: we built a bakery in the middle of the desert. Our cakes were part of over thirty birthdays and weddings. We fed a thousand burners each day with freshly baked goods. We had thirty volunteers with little to no experience enjoy baking beautiful french patisserie. We had a line hundred people long each day. And we operated our Bakery without using gasoline or diesel.
“[Opening up a bakery in a small town gave me] a view into all the people that I live with in this town but I had no other mechanism to know prior to this.” — Chef Andy Clark, Ballad of a Small-Town Bakery
“Every day 9am-1pm we opened our kitchen and invited burners to PARTICIPATE by baking, assembling and decorating their own cakes.”
Burners have birthdays at burning man. Burners get married at burning man. And burners want their sprinkle-covered dnautical-themed bat-mitzva cakes at burning man.
Every day 9am-1pm we opened our kitchen and invited burners to come in bake, assemble and decorate their own cakes. Amanda Lucia, my amazing co-kitchen lead, supported over thirty burners making their own cakes. People would mostly bring in their own supplies while we offered them our equipment, tools and expertise.
Amanda is a saint. She would wake up early every day and work with often-inexperienced sometimes-terrified amateur bakers to create the most beautiful celebratory cakes. We requested burners participate in making their own cakes with us assisting them and providing speciality ingredients. It was a huge success. Burners from all over the playa keep telling me about how amazing it was to have freshly baked cakes to celebrate their important moments.
“We opened up Black Rock Bakery daily 4pm-8pm, baked hundreds of fine french pastries and gifted those to burners.”
Gifting is at the heart of burning man. I myself struggle with accepting offers of help so being able to offer food gifts was a huge part of my burn.
We opened up Black Rock Bakery daily 4pm-8pm, baked hundreds of fine french pastries and gifted those to burners. Earlier in the day we had a small team prepare doughs so once 4pm rolls by we can bake off and be ready to serve by 5pm.
Black Rock Bakery 2018 Menu
There were an assortment of savory baked goods and dessert pastry we offered daily:
- Daily // Brunch: 200x Deep fried Cafe du Mond Beignets.
- Monday // Sweet: 500x heart shaped Financiers w/ hazelnut, browned butter and rum.
- Monday // Savory: 250x parmesan & chives popovers. 250x rosemary popovers.
- Tuesday // Sweet: 500x Passion fruit Eclairs.
- Tuesday // Sweet: 500x Chocolate Eclairs.
- Wednesday // Sweet: COOKIE MADNESS. 1000x cookies.
- Thursday // Savory: 500x pieces of Rosemary Focaccia with our house-made Black Truffle Butter.
- Thursday // Sweet: 500x Homemade Honey-Maple Marshmallows roasted to request.
- Friday // Sweet: 500x Passion Fruit Mousse, Creme Brulee, Dark Chocolate Mousse, White Chocolate Mousse.
- Friday // Savory: 300 x Rosemary & Goat Cheese Quiches.
- Friday // Drink: 10 gallons of cold Cocoa Ice-Cream.
“Our bakery in the dessert only happened because thirty volunteers decided to make it happen.”
There is only one priority at Black Rock Bakery: have fun. Safety third. Everyone is psychologically, mentally and physically taxed so caring for own volunteers was the most important thing we could do.
Our bakery in the dessert only happened because thirty volunteers decided to make it happen. They came in to bake in desert temperatures, mostly sleep deprived and occasionally in emotional turmoil. And they did so well. People with no baking experience making the richest hazelnut Financiers, the fluffiest popovers, and the tastiest Focaccia I’ve ever had. 🙏🙏🙏
Some numbers: we had each bakery camper sign up for two shifts (four hours each) and they accounted for about 80% of our volunteer hours. Most of those shift signups actually happened. The other 20% of volunteers were people who decided to bake with us, primarily fellow French Quarter burners.
I really want to start calling out specific success, but everyone and I do mean everyone who showed up did amazingly well.
Radical-inclusion means everyone should be able to walk in and get a tasty treat. When designing the menu for Black Rock Bakery 2018 we decided early on to offer gluten free and vegan baked goods.
That first day we made a huge batch of gluten free currant scones and vegan currant scones. We then baked some of the dough to serve that day, froze the rest and every day since baked off more of that dough.
We also made vegan marshmallows and vegan chocolate mousse for our friends who are both gluten-free and vegan. (shout out to our co-organizer Honoria for making that happen)
For our Cake bonanza we grouped all the gluten free and vegan cake bakers on the same day so we could support them collectively.
“We wrote an entire kitchen book for Black Rock Bakery 2018 including our must-have menu items, ingredients, recipes and stretch goals.”
If you had to open a bakery tomorrow, what ingredients would you buy? consider that you’re in the middle of the desert and can’t resupply. If you run out of flour, no more baking. If you run out of butter, no more cakes. If you run out of sugar, no more marshmallows.
First, we came up with our “must-have” menu items and what ingredients we’d need for those. Second, we looked for optional recipes where we could buy 1–2 extra ingredients and then be able to make additional recipes. Finally, we matched those up with quantities, suppliees and came up with an order sheet.
We wrote an entire kitchen book for Black Rock Bakery 2018 including our must-have menu items, ingredients, recipes and stretch goals. We then converted that to a shopping list from our various suppliers that ended up costing $2,000+ and weigh +1,500 lbs.
We ended up having three suppliers:
- Restaurant World through the Restaurant Cheetah app. Supplied 95% of our dry goods and an absolute pleasure to work with. Fast, responsive and app-based.
- Pacific Gourmet: a nightmare of customer service, no delivery and a general pain in the ass to work with. They were able to provide us with the ten most expensive items for about two-thirds of the cost (a 64oz bottle of vanilla for $100 instead of $150, etc).
- Cash & Carry in Reno: all of the Bakery’s perishable ingredients (eggs, milk, butter, etc) came from there. We picked that up, put them in our fridge with some ice and drove it to the playa. Pleasure to work with them.
“It takes a village to pull an outrageous feat of culinary excellence. The French Quarter village to be exact.”
It takes a lot to build a functional bakery on ground where yesterday there was only playa dirt. We needed an entire truck’s worth of stuff including a structure, the walls, a sink, a cooling rack, fridges, ovens, fuel, water tanks, kitchen tools, etc.
It takes a village to pull an outrageous feat of culinary excellence. The French Quarter village to be exact with its 300 burners and pre-existing logistics. I’m going to go ahead and call out names of people who stepped up for months before the burn to make Black Rock Bakery happen:
- Ari/Lucifer and the entire french quarter village brought that magnificent two story structure to life that ended up being our front room. They also helped us haul water & propane to the playa, and grey water out of the playa.
- Amanda/deephugs much made the entire bakery’s kitchen happen.
- Honoria much made sure we had a burning man camp and campers.
- Chance made the plumbing and ovens happen.
- Luke & George hauled everything to and from the playa.
Every time something needed to get done, someone stepped up and did it.
“Black Rock Bakery was an alternative energy bakery powered solely by propane: ovens, fridges, mixers and all.”
Building a bakery in the middle of the desert is a feat of engineering. When we were discussing how to power our bakery we were looking into ridiculous options with these massive 10kw convection ovens and 17kw diesel generators that needed 150 gallons of diesel to run. That was crazy town.
One of the Bakery’s campers, Chance, stepped up and made Black Rock Bakery an alternative energy bakery powered solely by propane: ovens, fridges, mixers and all.
For the bakery’s ovens Chance converted three gas-powered home ovens & stovetops to be powered by propane. Each of those had its own 100 lbs propane tank that lasted through the week.
Bakeries need more then just ovens. We had to power a water pump for the sink, two fridges, six mixers, immersion blender, food processor, etc. For that we purchased a 3.5kw propane generator and used up about 400 lbs of propane during the week.
“Black Rock Bakery was a place where burners could introspect on questions, share their answers, and read answers other burners previously shared.”
Black Rock Bakery can’t be the kind of place you stand in line, pay money and get an elcair. We wanted getting the baked good to be an experience.
We decided to make Black Rock Bakery was a place where burners could introspect on questions, share their answers, and read answers other burners previously shared. It was an incredibly powerful monument and by the second day our front room had people in it reading the walls even when the kitchen was closed.
We made about a thousand stickers split between light-hearted and depth-focused questions. I’d like to share a few questions and answers:
Q: “What makes you fall in love?”
A: “Being accepted for who I am right now.”Q: “What’s the narrative of your last breakup?”
A: “A bittersweet recognition that what each of us needed, the other couldn’t provide. Then came the big crash. It was a big day for me.”Q: “What’s your favourite childhood’s food?”
A: “Grandma’s enchiladas. I can close my eyes and smell it.”Q: “What or who are you grieving?”
A: “my mom. She died last week.”
Was it worth it? Yeah. We did the unimaginable: we built a bakery in the middle of the desert. Our cakes were part of over thirty birthdays and weddings. We fed a thousand burners each day with freshly baked goods. We had thirty volunteers with little to no experience enjoy baking beautiful french patisserie. We had a line hundred people long each day.
What’s the personal cost of this kind of project?
Sharing the effort and time involved in building our little bakery in the dessert I often get asked “Did you have any time to do Burning Man?”. Well, I did. Even after spending ten hours each day in the kitchen I still had an amazing burn.
I made friends for life. I started a new relationship with one my closest friends. I experienced installation art that changed my view on art. I had meaningful self-discovery around the nature of social relationships in my life. I danced and partied until the chilly sunrise. I had forty of my friends scream my name lovingly as I entered their dome. A close friend decorated a Chef’s hat and gifted it to me.
Want to join us at the black rock bakery camp next year? apply here.
Were you one of the people we fed? If so, let me know in the comments!
