CHAPTER SIX

MASONRY OVENS OF

EUROPE and AMERICA

I mentioned in the introduction to this book that I saw my first masonry oven at Heather Leavitt's in Barnard, Vermont. I had heard about "ovens" for a couple of years; I had even sent to Alan Scott for his plans catalog (a year before), but I hadn't |baked in one. Truth be told, Heather hadn't really baked in her oven either, since the party to which I invited myself was her oven warming party.

It was a wonderful scene when I got there with my bowl of dough. The Leavitts had a tent set up in case of rain and there were kids tearing around everywhere, jumping up and down. The fire was roaring in Heather's clay even, under a free-form roof framed with saplings from the woods behind the oven. even the oven tools looked great, made out of natural crooks of trees and odd lumps of steel by Randy Leavitt.

I introduced myself, formed up my batards, had a beer, met some nice folks, and hot ready for the bake. Though Heather now teaches weekend workshops in masonry oven baking and is cool as a cucumber about it, on that day it was almost as new to her as it was to the rest of us�none of us knew exactly what was going on. We overheated the oven and then we didn't wait long enough for it to equalize its hot spots and cool down.

No matter. We put my batards in, because we did know skinny loaves could take a little extra heat. A little extra heat? They were golden brown in eight minutes, though it should have been at least twenty. Maybe they were a little underdone in the crumb, but who cared? When we pulled them out they were beautiful, cracking and popping as they started to cool, bursting with steam as we ripped them open and ate them without butter, with butter, with Vermont cheese, with imported Brie. Every man, woman, and child ate those loaves, and they were gone in a couple of minutes�it was like wolves on sheep.

Building your own clay oven is really a hands-on experience (photo: Alan Scott).

Then we stopped, looked around, smiled, and baked the larger loaves. When I went home (much later) I knew I was going to build an oven. I didn't know then that I would meet Alan, or that I would build my oven on a trailer, but I knew that I would build an oven.

Oven History

My oven is descended from Heather's oven, which is descended from the old ovens of Quebec, descended in turn from French rural ovens of the 17th century. Ovens in rural Europe have traditionally been horizontal retained-heat ovens based on the Roman model. The basic design has never changed in two thousand years. The oven consists of an arch of masonry covering the masonry oven floor, or hearth. Often there is a second arch underneath that supports the hearth and creates a space used to store ashes, bundles of brush, or logs. Roman-style ovens are direct-fired: the wood is burned in the baking chamber itself, and the exhaust pours out of the door of the oven and up a flue located just above and outside the oven door (if a flue is provided; often ancient ovens have none and the smoke just pours out and disperses). The oven is then swept clean and dough is put in to bake in the retained heat of the fire. This type of oven is also called a black oven, because the soot is never completely burned out of the baking chamber by the heat of the fire. The beehive oven built into the fireplace mass of American Colonial and Federal period houses is basically a small version of the Roman oven that shares a flue with a fireplace. The front of the oven is either flush with the back of the fireplace (which receives its smoke) or the oven is beside the fireplace but connected to its flue by a short connecting flue controlled by a damper.

Although the basic plan of black ovens did not change much over the years, the social and cultural context of baking has varied from time to time and place to place. Some ovens were small and used by a family; some were large and used by a professional baker. In much of Europe, however, ovens were controlled by nobility or the church, and this was in part a reflection of the role the church played in introducing grain growing and bread baking to continental Europe. A book by the Swiss author Pierre Delacretaz, Les Vieux Fours a Pain (Old Bread Ovens) reviews the history and sociology of the traditional communal oven from the 12th century onward in the French/Swiss border country. These ovens, called banal ovens because of the rules regulating their use (les bans), were of the type used throughout rural France.

The following passages are paraphrased from his text, with translation assistance from Laurence Baudelet and the permission of Monsieur Delacretaz. Although anyone could use the communal oven for a fee, the oven belonged to the lord, and he controlled its use. He had the right to fine anyone who avoided the use of his ovens, his mills, his presses, his bulls, or his sawmills; these fines were called bans. Originally these ownership rights (banalites) belonged to the Carolingian kings, but they were gradually usurped by certain nobles who had the right to act as magistrates, and who could impose fines. ..... By the 15th century the lordly rights had evolved further, and were usually preserved as a license or lease (fermage) which the lord sold to a master of the communal oven, who then could sublet its use to individuals, or could bake for a charge (the person who actually ran the oven was the fournier). . . . Comparisons of 15th-century sources with those of later centuries show that rules relating to ovens (construction, repair, use, rents, taxes) changed little over half a millennium. . . . The major change occurred when the lordly rights were taken on by municipal authorities (at or near the time of the Revolution). . . . That did not make it less expensive for its users; the working rules became harsher for everyone.

Delacretaz points out that the heat remaining in the oven was considered to be owned by the fournier for a certain span after he finished baking, and no fruit or wood could be dried without his involvement. Many crops could not be dried in the oven at all, by published rules. Municipal records even referred to particular damaged trees that could be burned by the oven man, as wood at that time was precious. The right to clean the ashes out of the oven was sold, as the ash could be used for fertilizer. Even the sweeping up around the oven was regulated, since crumbs could be used to feed chickens.

"It isn't tradition that assures the survival of our bread; it is the bread that assures the survival of our traditions."

In light of these restrictions on what common folk could do with an oven in medieval France, it is interesting to learn what the families of Quebec did with their clay, brick, or stone farm ovens�ovens that were continuously constructed over a span of nearly three hundred years, and in general use until fifty or sixty years ago. In a book about the Quebec ovens, Boily and Blanchette (see bibliography) mention that families cooked many things besides bread: pork and beans, meat pies for the winter holidays, and cookies, buns, and desserts throughout the year. Occasionally the ovens were used to sterilize the feather stuffings of pillows and mattresses: the feathers were washed, then dried in the warm oven for five or six days in sacks to kill odors and parasites. The bed linens and eating utensils of the sick were treated the same way. Flax was dried in the oven before it was processed into linen, and newly woven woolens were put wet into the oven for fulling (shrinking). Herbs, fruit, and even lumber for furniture making were all dried in the oven when necessary.

Similarly, in much of England, where the lord's ownership of the mill and oven was not so persistent, families in many districts baked their own bread. Even in cities public bakeries were uncommon. In Manchester, for example (which in 1804 had a population of ninety thousand) there was apparently not a single commercial bakery. Thus for several centuries the English, like the Quebecois, had ovens in or about the house, and used them for a variety of purposes.

After the Revolution most French rural ovens became public property (owned by the municipality, the commune). According to research by Nancy lott (see bibliography), these communal ovens continued in regular use in small villages until after World War II. In larger towns bakers used their commercial ovens in a trade originally controlled by guilds. The old village ovens were usually built into a small building that resembled a chapel, placed at the center of the village near the well, the church, and the wash house. Oriented to take advantage of prevailing winds, the oven had a foyer or outer room that was a popular gathering and gossiping spot for the town�and a meeting place in the evening for courting couples.

Most early French communal ovens did not have flues (chimneys), and the foyers of the oven houses were of necessity open so the smoke could pour out and drift away. This roofed room had counters around its walls for baskets and bread. According to lott, most of the names for parts of the oven and its house were taken from church architecture: the building was the "chapel" (la chapelle), the outer hearth the "altar" (I'autel), and the stone water jug the "font" (l'auge). The open end of early oven buildings was vaulted to support a stone gable formed by stones called pignons, giving the oven houses a Gothic look (this stepped stone gable may have originally protected the edge of a thatched roof from embers). The buildings themselves were built of stone or of rammed earth (pise), with a roof of slate where it was available. The foundation of the oven was usually of stone formed in an arch. The oven face was stone, and the floor of the foyer was either rammed earth or paved with small stones.

Each family baked once a week or once every other week; in the mountains, all the bread for the winter was sometimes baked in

Alan Scott built the oven, George Gonzales cut and laid volcanic stone from the Sierras, then a landscaper rolled in. some boulders. This oven is the American equivalent of the great stone ovens of Europe.

the fall. Bread was often eaten stale�hacked apart and softened with milk or soup. The oven itself might be in more frequent use, depending on the size of the village. There was typically a wooden plaque on the outside face of the oven building on which tags were hung to indicate the order in which village families were to bake their bread. The dough was proofed at home, then carried to the oven on a long, wide board. The loaves going into the oven were slashed with distinct patterns so each family got back its own� really its own, since the grain from which it was made was grown on their farm. The leaven was carefully kept from baking day to baking day, in a stone jar in a cool spot. In the winter the leaven was revitalized by putting it in a warm bed. Then pots of coals were placed below the mixing trough (petrin) to keep the dough warm enough to ferment. Leaven might be shared between families, depending on the baking schedule.

The eventual decline in regular use of these rural ovens after World War II reflected a general movement of the French population to larger towns, coupled with the availability of better transportation so that commercially-baked bread began to be sold even in hamlets that did not have a baker. It was easier (no extra firewood to cut, no kneading, no time at the oven), and the bread was not expensive, as the basic price was subsidized and set by the government. Now some French villages with ovens have a festival each year when the oven is heated and used. In a few towns there are diehards or enthusiasts who bake more often. One of lott's informants told her, "It isn't tradition that assures the survival of our bread; it is the bread that assures the survival of our traditions."

Vertical and Horizontal Flat-Bread Ovens

In much of the world it is difficult to grow the kind of wheat that can be made into highly risen loaves that would be cooked in a closed oven. The flat breads of many countries are therefore made of durum wheat (in which the gluten is less elastic), oats, rye, or other flour cooked on a hot rock, a griddle, or in an open-topped vertical oven like the Indian randoor, a large bell- or barrel-shaped clay pot that is usually plastered with mud or a mixture of sand and cement. A fire is kept burning in these vertical ovens (there is a small draft opening at the bottom) while a quick slap of the hand plasters a disc of sticky dough onto the inner surface of the upper oven where it will bake in a minute or so, producing a flavorful bread that is mostly crust. If the oven is well shaped, little of the radiant heat of the fire escapes through the upper opening, although the combustion gasses are rapidly lost and the walls and floor are not insulated. Therefore, efficiency is low.

Some Mediterranean flatbreads (such as pizza) are baked in horizontal ovens on the Roman plan, but with the fire maintained in one side or at the back of the oven chamber, not raked out. These ovens bake by a combination of retained heat and continuous heat, but they are somewhat more efficient than the tandoor for baking large quantities of bread, if well designed so an excessive draft is avoided. They do not require the same mass of masonry (the walls can be thinner) as re-tained-heat ovens.

19th- and 20th-century European and American Commercial Ovens

The plans in this book are for only one of several possible types of masonry oven. It is worthwhile to consider several of the common types of historical and modern ovens, for comparison.

WOOD-FIRED EUROPEAN COMMERCIAL OVENS

The ovens of the commercial bakers in French towns were of two types. The first were large internal-combustion (synonyms:directly fired, Roman, black) ovens, like rural communal ovens but somewhat larger. The second type is typified by the gueulard oven, a hybrid in which a firebox below the front third of the oven is vented into the oven itself through a removable cast iron elbow, the gueulard. The floor of the oven is inclined a few degrees, making the oven easier to load and unload with a peel, increasing the draft during firing, and effectively holding in steam during baking. The oven is exhausted though a rear flue which can be shut with a damper.