"Jeff Berry" > wrote in message
...
> In article >, Tim W >
> wrote:
>>Said to be the first ever printed recipe for bread from the anonymous
>>
>> 'The Good Huswife's Haindmaide for the Kitchen' of 1594.
>>.... I can't believe an hour in the oven is the baking time, maybe an hour
>>rising in the warm oven before the fire is lit. ....

>
> I don't believe that's quite how the ovens of the time worked. The bread
> ovens would be of the domed sort, and the method of use was to jam the
> burning material in there until it was up to temperature, then pull all
> the
> embers out, give it a quick mopping, and then do the baking with the
> residual heat.
>
> Given that, there really isn't a warm oven for the bread to rise in, nor a
> way to simply light the fire. I suspect that the instructions are
> correct,
> given the technology and ingredients of the day.
>


If a wood fired oven is used daily I thougth it might be a warm place for
proving the loaves before it was lit, but I can't be right because the
timing would still be all wrong, you would have to remove them and wait at
least another hour while you fired the oven with faggots.

Anyway those timings can't be too accurate or critical in a world without
clocks. They must equate almost to "prove for a short while then bake slow
and long"

Tim W