History of oven heating

Oven is an enclosed compartment usually part of a cooker, for cooking and heating food. Ancient ovens were made of heavy masonry, brick, or clay and heated by building a wood fire inside them. In this type of oven the brick absorbs the intense heat of the fire and cooks foods long after the fire has gone out and the ashes removed.

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

History of baking leavened bread

The grain paste left to stand for a time sooner or later collects wild yeasts form air, and begins to ferment. This was the beginning of leavened bread, although for most of human history the presence of yeast was mostly accidental.

It is believed that the use of sourdough in bread leavening production developed in ancient Egypt in approximately 3000 BC and from there spread gradually to Europe, throughout ancient Greece and the Roam Empire until the present.

The ancient Egyptians developed the art of cooking leavened doughs in molds the first loaf pans. The molds were heated and then filled with dough, covered and stacked in a heated chamber. These were perhaps the first mass-produced breads.

During the Barbarian migration period in Europe, bread was not the primary food of the Barbarians and industry bread manufacturing disappeared.

The technology of sourdough bread appeared in the monasteries until the twelfth century when the profession of baker reappeared in France.

An important innovation in Roman baking was introduced by the Gauls, a European people who had been conquered by the Romans. They discovered that adding the froth from beer to bread dough made especially light, well leavened bread. This is the beginning of the use of a controlled yeast source for making bread doughs.

Since the nineteenth century, baker’s yeast has almost completely replaced sourdough in the leavening of bread.
History of baking leavened bread

History of baking process

The leavened bread was probably made by accident by a royal baker in the Nile Valley in Egypt. It was between 3500 and 3000 BC, the Egyptian discovered – the fermentation. 

The ancient Egyptians later learned to control the kind of yeast on their bread. Each time they baked, they set aside some of the leavened dough to mix with the next batch. 

During Pharaonic period (3100-330 BC), bread formed the basis of the entire administrative system, being both a unit of measure and currency. 

The people of the Mediterranean are gradually obtained the knowledge of baking leavened bread from the Egyptians and contributed their own expertise to the baking process. But before that time, 8,000 year ago Swiss Lake dwellers already learned how to mix flour with water to make dough. They poured the mixture on heated stones to bake it. 

As early as 200 BC, the Greeks established public bakeries. These were manned by former slaves. When Greeks conquered by Romans, the conqueror further improved the baking industry. When the English colonist migrated to America, they brought with them the art of baking. 

In 1604, baking was a flourishing industry. In most New England homes, the oven was built into the side of a large fireplace. The Pennsylvania Dutch did their baking in brick ovens in bakehouses that were completely separate from their homes. 

In the late 1700s, a new kind of oven was designed, the cats-iron range, which replaced both the brisk oven and the fireplace as the primarily choice for cooking. 

In America in 1750, the first chemical leavening agent was used. Known as pearl ash –potassium bicarbonate), it was created from natural ash of wood and other natural resource.  

History of baking process