In the earliest models from the Harappan era or before, native Indian cooks of the Indus Valley depended on clay vessels sunk in the ground to store water or grain. Indian cooks used the earliest inground tandoor pottery oven around 26,000 BC at Kalinbanga.
Ovens built in the Ukraine around 20,000 BC were simple pits filled with coals and covered with ash, on which cook set wrapped in leaves, then mounded the whole operation with soil.
About 10 000 year ago, in the eastern Mediterranean, ovens were constructed to parch cereal grains before threshing and to bake bread. These ovens were a single chamber in which the fuel was burned and then rakes out and the grain or unbaked bread inserted.
Bread oven date to around 3000 BC, when the Sumerians of Ur began baking loaves in stone ovens.
Ovens in the ancient Middle East were large clay domes that had been hardened by fire. Several families shared one large oven. A wood fire heated the oven, and bakers placed flat loaves of bread against the oven walls for baking.
Sometimes, bakers placed loaves in the bottom of the oven, on hot rocks, with a few rocks placed on top of the loaves to speed baking.
In 1890, 90 percent of American bread was baked at home by women. Small bakeries existed then had existed before, but toward the end of the 19th century larger commercial bakeries began to appear.
History of oven heating
