"Tim W" > wrote in message
...
>
> "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
I doubt that a wood fired oven was used every day. For example, in rural
England in C19 and in France, firing up the oven was a weekly affair.
Graham