SPBCFAQ 1.3
SPBCFAQ 1.3
We knead to bake!
For the sake of brevity, the Saint Paul Bread Club will be abbreviated to SPBC. This FAQ was created and is maintained by David S. Cargo.
The bread club is a group of people who are passionate about bread. Most of us are home bakers. The club was founded in Saint Paul by Dan "Klecko" McGleno, and meets in Saint Paul, but members are not required to live in Saint Paul.
Klecko called the first meeting in January of 2003. There have been quarterly meetings since that time.
The only formal activities of the SPBC are the quarterly meetings. In the future we might participate in the state fair. Members are free to organize other activities if they wish.
The club has a founder (Dan "Klecko" McGleno) and two officers, a president and a vice president for communications. The officers schedule meetings, maintain a club roster, and do publicity. Subjects covered in future meetings are suggested by attendees. Members of the club are encouraged to help with publicity.
You don't have to be an expert bread baker to be a member; you just have to love good bread.
Anybody can join. All ages are welcome.
There are no dues for the SPBC. Membership in the club is free.
The founder, Klecko, believes that having dues would make the club much less fun, and introduce too much bureaucracy and politics into the club. This does constrain the club to activites that people are willing to volunteer to do.
You can just show up at a meeting, or you can contact David S. Cargo (651-699-7676), the Vice President for Communications, and he can add you to the club's contact list. (We need at least a phone number or e-mail address.)
The club calendar for 2004 has meetings quarterly, on the third Saturdays of January, April, July, and October, at 3 p.m. Meetings for future years have not been set yet.
We used to meet at the Community Room at the Mississippi Market at Selby and Dale. This was OK for a simple meeting, but it limitied us to talking. Now we meet at the Saint Agnes Baking Company, where we can actually make and bake bread. Saint Agnes is at 644 Olive Street, in Saint Paul, just south and east of the Pennsylvania exit from I-35E, north of University and south of Pennsylvania in a little industrial strip.
Note that both Mapquest and Yahoo Maps have out-of-date information about this area. Either take University Ave. and turn north on Olive Street, or take the Pennsylvania exit, go east to Olive Street and turn south.
![[ Yahoo! Maps ]](http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/mp/gr/mplogo.gif){kind=small}
Meetings normally last about 2 hours, although people often stick around and talk longer.
Meetings previous to the April one were in the Community Room at the Mississippi Market at Selby and Dale; the only "hands-on" we had was when Klecko (and others) brought bread to share. So, there had been no demonstrations of techniques or actual making of bread.
As of April 2004, we have started to meet at the St. Agnes Baking Co., where Klecko is the production manager. Since it's a real bakery, we have more opportunity for hands-on activities; certainly in July we will be actually making and baking bread.
Normally (based on a small sample) meetings start with Klecko showing off the breads that he has brought along and talking about what's going on the bread business (trends and what's "hot"). Then other members might show off what they brought (in previous meetings, I've brought milk bread and cheese bread, and other people have brought their own sourdough breads). Then we typically go around the table and everybody asks questions about what they are interested in.
We have often gone around the table doing introductions. At the bake-off, there was a lot of circulating and getting acquainted going on. There also tends to be a lot of hanging around and chatting after the scheduled part of the meetings.
Word of mouth, posters, flyers, notices in the newspapers, and in internet news groups.
There are some summaries of previous meetings available at the web pages maintained for the SPBC by David S. Cargo.
The SPBC does not maintain a formal list of members. There are over 60 people on our contact list. About 30 different people have attended meetings.
Club members have little in common besides a love of good bread. The genders are actually pretty close to balanced.
We are a mixed group of people (mixed by age and gender). A quick scan over my contact list (as of June 1, 2004) shows 31 men and 34 women. (I don't know how many of them have attended meetings.) People of all ages are members. Many are older adults, and a fair portion are seniors. We tend to be the people who have time to bake, or who feel that baking is important enough to make time.
The main requirement for membership is that you be passionate about bread. A lot of my cooking has been developing ways to deal with left-over bread (such as strata) and extra sourdough starter (waffles and crepes are a couple of good ways that I've found).
Bread bakers of any level of experience are welcome; we all have knowledge to share.
Klecko promotes the bread club at events where he makes presentations, such as the Milling Museum, the Minnesota State Fair, the UP Show, Wisdom Ways at Saint Catherine's, and the Saint Paul Theosophical Society.
The only other SPBC event was a field trip (on June 30, 2004) to an outdoor hearth oven near Stockholm, Wisconsin. No other field trips are planned, but they might happen if someone steps forward to organize them.
That hasn't happened yet, but I'm planning on asking people in the Highland Park area if they want to get together periodically, just to chat. (My contact list has gotten big enough that I can tell from people's phone numbers that there's at least a half-dozen of us in Highland.)
Please contact me (David S. Cargo) if you are interested in such a get-together. I anticipate we might meet monthly at a local coffee shop (or tea shop) for a short time on a weekday night.
Klecko is the nickname of Dan McGleno. Quoting from here:
"Klecko has a passion for beautiful breads. He studied at Dunwoody and the American Institute of Baking. With 22 years experience in baking, he has baked for Presidents Reagan and Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the NHL and NBA. He provides breads for many local restaurants and co-ops, and is head baker and production manager at St. Agnes Bakery in St. Paul."
There is also an article about him in City Pages.
The club itself has had a notice posted in the Minneapolis StarTribune and an article published in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Club members David S. Cargo and Carol Sturgeleski were featured in an article in Saint Paul's Avenues monthly magazine. We hope to keep the SPBC in the public eye.
There is a web site as part of the personal web site of David S. Cargo, the Vice President for Communications; it's here and of course still under construction.
Not at this time; volunteers are welcome.
David S. Cargo, the Vice President for Communications, maintains a contact list with members' phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Sometimes he will send e-mail to members who have e-mail addresses.