In our Altar-Bread room, we have five stoves to bake Communion wafers of various kinds: white, whole-wheat, gluten-free, both large and small.
Large wafers may be patterned with small crosses, plain or imprinted with a single large cross.
Each stove consists of 2 pizza-sized plates heated to roughly 140C, which come together clamshell-wise to bake the batter.
It is quite an art to manage four or five stoves single-handed. Since each giant wafer takes about a minute to be ready, an individual sister could be opening, emptying, refilling and cleaning around a stove roughly every twelve seconds for around 90 minutes at a time. Our stoves also bake at different speeds so they are constantly getting in and out of sync with one another.
It is not so dissimilar to the party trick where a juggler spins dozens of plates on tall sticks without dropping any.
Parcels of wafers are distributed to churches throughout the country and a few abroad.
Price Information
Baked by the Community, using organic flour from our local Cotswold Mill:-
Choice of white or wholemeal
- 63 mm diameter (sold in packets of 40)
- Large Cross design (with fraction mark on reverse): 9p ea.
- Small crosses all over pattern: 8p ea.
- Plain both sides: 7p ea.
- 28 mm diameter (sold in packets of 500)
- (Small cross all over design, or plain): £8.00 per bag of 500
Gluten free, non-wheat breads
Small square cut by hand: £4.00 per bag of 50
Concelebration breads
We also retail 140mm diameter breads, marked into 24 pieces: £9.50 – box of 25
Note: Packing & Postage extra
Cheques should be made payable to the COMMUNITY OF ST CLARE
Electronic payments: sort code 30-99-78 account 00321137
If you are interested in purchasing wafers or require further details please contact:
altarbread@oscfreeland.co.uk
or write to:
The Altar Bread Room
St Mary’s Convent
Freeland, Witney.
OX29 8AJ
or phone 01993 881225 preferably mornings 10-11:30am
Community of St Clare, Freeland 