Four Spaniards, 9 Bean Rows, and one giant clay oven
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Sometime in late August, Jen and Nic Welty, who own 9 Bean Rows bakery on M-204 between Lake Leelanau and Suttons Bay, will use their new, state-of-the-art, wood-fired clay convection oven for the first time. The oven, which measures 12 feet in diameter, occupies 144 square feet, weighs 70,000 pounds, and emits exceptional radiant heat, was built on-site by a team of four Barcelonians during one week in mid-July.
The Weltys hired Juan Llopis Planas and Hornos Ipsor Barcelona, a family-owned company and team of craftsmen who are considered the best in the world at building clay and brick ovens. According to Llopis, these ovens, which have been used for centuries, “marry both old and new concepts.”
A demand for higher quality bread, the need for a bigger oven, and the desire to burn wood instead of fossil fuels prompted the Weltys to make the investment, said Nic. “This oven answers all three of the problems we wanted to solve.”
Customers who have swarmed to 9 Bean Rows since it opened in 2009 can continue to expect delicious sourdough boules, flaky croissants worthy of a European patisserie, and pizza pies from the pizza oven they installed in 2020.
Jen knew for 22 years that she wanted this oven. She learned how to bake bread on this kind of clay convection oven from a family of Belgians she worked for in 2000 in Ohio. But when she and Nic launched 9 Bean Rows 13 years ago, at the time they couldn’t afford an horno by Ipsor Barcelona. So they settled on a used oven that was a couple decades old — “a dinosaur,” she said. Every day she wondered if it was going to die.
“The oven we have right now is old and has hot spots (and cold spots),” said Jen. “I can put two loafs of the same bread next to one another, and they will come out different 40 minutes later—one is burned, the other is raw.”
To compensate, 9 Bean Rows bakers have to constantly move loaves of bread around inside the oven.
“This new oven will help us bake quality products that are more consistent and look better. Steam goes in the whole chamber, so the bread comes out looking shiny. It’s about quality and aesthetics.”
“I was trained to bake on this kind of oven before,” said Jen. “Ever since then I’ve been waiting to get our own … As they say, once you’ve tasted Don Perignon (a brand of vintage champagne), there’s no going back.”
Llopis spends very little money on advertising his company’s ovens: most of their business comes from word of mouth. Nic explained that the Barcelonians work on only one project per month, and rarely in the United States. Most of their ovens are in Spain, France, Belguim or Germany.
The Spaniards arrived in Suttons Bay and began building the oven on Thursday, July 14. They worked 10-hour days, beginning at 8 or 9 in the morning and working until 6 or 7 at night, and finished on the seventh day. Llopis and his crew— Ignacio Ramon Figueredo Insfran, dubbed “Laser Eye Nacio” the master craftsman, Eduardo Ramon Figueredo Cano, and Gustavo Ismael Figueredo Aquiono—two of whom live in Paraguay when they’re not flying around the world building stoves—stayed on the Welty family’s property in Lake Leelanau and cooked traditional Paraguayan dishes over an open fire pit for their hosts most evenings (they ate once at Nittolo’s).
Nic marveled at their craftsmanship as they installed the mechanical components of the oven to work in clay while building clay convention on the inside. “Nacio,” the master mason of the crew, built the clay dome and measured progress with his eyes. “He came just a millimeter or two away from perfection,” said Nic. “When it looked like we were a couple bricks short, they were able to get creative to be super precise.”
The Spaniards completed the oven on July 21 and left town for their next project. The Weltys will let it cure for 28 days and then begin a 10-day step-up period with slow increments of fire. By late August, their state-of-the-art oven should be up and running.
