page
Bread oven history
A history of the bread oven
The bread oven, as we still know it today, has a very long history. The “basic model” with oven floor and dome has been around for at least 4,000 years. Bread can also be baked in other, simpler ways. Man has always been inventive in his preparation of food. Depending on his lifestyle and the materials available to him, he baked bread in a clay pot on an open fire, under a movable bell-shaped vessel, or in a temporary or a fixed oven construction.
The “oven” has been around for thousands of years. Archaeologists have found remains of prehistoric ovens in many places around the world. Archaeological traces are sometimes difficult to recognise, however. Often only the substructure of the oven remains, and you do not know what the walls or dome looked like. Sometimes you still find part of the content, and you can thus determine what was baked in the oven. Because food remains do not preserve at all well, it is almost impossible to prove that an oven...