Citizen Collective Revives Gonesses Bakery in Malmedy

A beloved institution in the Belgian town of Malmedy has been given a new lease on life. The Gonesses bakery, known for its unique 80-tonne wood-fired oven, reopened its doors on Saturday, August 8 — at the symbolic time of 8:08 in the morning — thanks to a remarkable outpouring of community support. The bakery had closed on February 14, 2026, due to a structural shortage of qualified labor, a crisis that has plagued artisanal bakeries across Belgium.

A Community Rises to the Challenge

When the bakery’s team realized the demanding pace of wood-fired baking was unsustainable, they turned to the community for help. “We thought we were heading straight into the wall and exhausting ourselves,” said Michaël Pelsser, coordinator of the Gonesses oven collective, in an interview with RTBF. “Baker is a profession in shortage. Wood-fired baker is a profession that takes a year to learn, taming a wood-fired oven. And starting at 9 PM, finishing the next day at 9 AM, in the long run that’s not sustainable.”

The response was overwhelming. When the team launched a survey in July 2025 to gauge interest in transforming the bakery into a cooperative, they received more than 300 responses in under five hours, with 70 percent positive. Public meetings in March 2026 drew 40 people each time — far exceeding expectations. “There were 40 of us the first time,” Pelsser recalled. “I thought there would be 15 for the second. But there were still 40.”

The project evolved from a formal cooperative into a broader “citizen collective” — a more flexible community initiative. The new team includes citizens from remarkably diverse backgrounds: bakers, an anesthesiologist doctor, delivery people, and others with various skills. “We’re still asking for more, so any skill is welcome,” Pelsser said. “It ranges from baker to fire-breather, to the person at the counter, the person with cooperative skills.”

The Rolls Royce of Ovens

The bakery’s centerpiece is its extraordinary 80-tonne masonry wood-fired oven — described by enthusiasts as “La Rolls Royce des fours” (The Rolls Royce of ovens). This falling-heat oven performs three bakes in one and is unique within a 100-kilometer radius. L’Avenir described the restoration effort in detail, noting that the oven required a month of daily heating to remove moisture from its massive structure before the first bread could be baked.

Baker Laurent Dewalque explained the meticulous process: “For a month, we did heatings and heatings to dry it out, to remove the humidity in the entire 80-tonne mass. It takes at least a month of heating, almost every day, to remove the humidity.”

The restoration also involved fabricating a new “gueulard” (oven mouth) — a critical piece that, after 28 years of service, had to be entirely rebuilt. Using a 3D scan by an engineer neighbor and the expertise of Établissements Georis, a new gueulard in Incoloy 800 — a material resistant to extreme temperatures — was designed and installed, as reported by Pain & Pâtisserie.

A Living Tradition

The bakery has been an institution in Malmedy since 1933. The word “Gonesse” comes from the Malmedy Walloon dialect and means “small breads” — the bakery’s signature product, which represents 35 percent of its turnover. The bakery was originally run by Marc Dewalque, a pioneer of organic bread in Belgium since the 1970s. When it reopened in 2017 under new management, the team kept the same recipes and traditions, including the wood-fired oven, as RTBF documented in a 2017 report.

For customers, the oven’s living nature is part of the appeal. “Every time you go to buy bread, it will never be exactly the same because the oven is alive,” said customer Nicolas Bourguignon. “It depends on the weather outside, it will be a bit more baked, a bit less baked.”

Eric De Ruest, a baker and supporter of the collective, sees the reopening as a win for the entire region: “It’s excellent news for the region and for natural health since sourdough bread is something excellent for health, we know that.”

A Future of Training and Transmission

Beyond serving the community, the bakery will soon become a training center to transmit the excellence of wood-fired bread-making — a crucial step in preserving this unique craft for future generations. The bakery’s struggles reflect a broader crisis facing artisanal bakeries across Belgium, where the profession faces a structural shortage of qualified workers and rising costs have forced many establishments to close.

For now, the collective is celebrating a hard-won victory. The reopening on August 8 was a major community event, with the collective welcoming everyone to see the oven and taste the products. As Pelsser noted, the journey from crisis to revival was far from easy: “We saw that if we continued like this, we would die slowly by a slow fire and we don’t want that.” Instead, the community chose to keep the fire burning.