Welcome to the Wood Fired Oven Podcast

Nicolas Thommen

Nicolas Thommen Profile Photo

Baker/Owner

I grew up in Switzerland. At the age of 19 I went to Canada for one year to better my English skills and play hockey. The team ended up liking me a lot and I didn’t wanna leave anymore. So I stayed another season and then another…. After my last year playing junior for that team I was offered to come play for the university team in Sudbury Ontario, which is where I am still located now. I graduated there with a major in Motion picture arts and two minors (theatre arts and indigenous studies). Out of University I started working as a lighting technician and a variety of big and small movie productions but after talking to a immigration lawyer I realized the the contract based work of the film industry is not preferred by the government. My goal at this point was to get my permanent residency through the skilled workers program. So I contacted my old teammate who owned a painting company and started working full time for him. This job was not my calling at all and left me unsatisfied and quite honestly unhappy. And after working for about a year to a year and a half my girlfriend and I decided instead of trying to apply through the skilled worker program we would take the common law way (this means we are in a serious relationship and have been living together. In the eye of the law it’s pretty much like we’re married). I was still working the painting job and then covid hit. In the Time I had during the shutdown I started my own sourdough culture and got really hooked on it because I was missing this type of bread which I grew up with at home. (We had 2. Andries writhing a 5 minute walk from our house in Switzerland). So I started making one or two loaves a day and then I wanted to do more so I made 4 loaves and started to handing them out to friends and neighbours. After a little while the costs of the flour started to rack up so started to see if people would wanna buy them off me and luckily they did. Because I’m an immigrant I wanted to go legit as soon as possible so I checked what I had to do to start a home based business. At the time we had tenants living in our downstairs apartment (my girlfriend owns a duplex). Our apartment was way to small to start a business out of it so I had to pump the breaks a little bit on my business plans. I did quit my job at that point because I figure I can’t go on like this and I had to figure out how to make this business work. And finally out tenants told us they plan to move out in September. Which left me with a whole summer and no possibility to start my business in a scalable way yet. Having looked at different ovens and options I came across a lot of wood fired oven plans and with the time I had open now I sold the idea to my girl friend that instead of building a retaining wall in our backyard I could build a big outdoor kitchen with a build in bbq and a pizza oven. And lucky me she was into it. So with the help of YouTube videos and google I build that outdoor kitchen all summer and got done just in time before winter hit. Where we live winters are a lot of -20c sometimes even -30 or -40c days. So we didn’t even get to use it that much that winter but we still squished in a few pizza parties. After our tenants moved out I renovated the downstairs apartment and brought it up to a commercial kitchen standards. I ordered an electric hearth oven and a spiral mixer and by February of 2022 I got licensed and opened my business. I started promoting it on Instagram and started to bake to order. It started very slowly and was no where where I could make a living off it. Once my oven finally arrived in mid March I tried to sign up to the farmers market but was told I won’t be able to join till the summer market starts in June. I continued to baking by preorders and started baking for a small local retail store in town. Finally when the first market day was around the corner I had 18 Bannetons (that’s the baskets you rest the dough in overnight before baking it the next day) and I was able to make some focaccia too. at the market i sold out really quick so I ordered more bannetons and more sheet pans and I sold out again and again. by now i make 45 loaves of bread, 36 focaccia around 100 cookies and sell between 20-30 pizza doughs a market. I would love to do more but my days are to short. Monday and Tuesday i am back to working as a painter. wednesday i wake up at 4 am and start making the dough for thursdays market. By the evening after I get done I fire up the WFO so its ready to bake the next day. On thursday I wake up at 4 am again and start baking the breads and simultaneously make dough for the next day again. By 2 pm I sell the bread at the market till 6 pm and afterwards do my dishes from the market and go to bed. On friday I get up at 4 am again to bake for the retail store and I start my dough prep for saturdays market again. by the evening after finishing all the prep I fire up the WFO again so i can bake early Saturday morning with it. Saturday I wake up at 2 am and bake all my breads and start selling at the market by 9am to 2 pm. After that I do my dishes and my week is finally over. Just last week I bought a portable pizza oven which allows me to cook up some fresh pizzas at the market after I sell out my breads.
I hope this bio wasn’t to crapy to read, my apologies I’m a better talker then a writer. If you have any other questions please let me know.

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