In further elaborating on my references of Colonial bread making and shipment made over the past month in my columns and with conversations with Director Shaner, by 1767, the bulk of exports from Colonial Pennsylvania consisted of wheat, flour, bread, corn, pork, and beef, bar iron, pig iron, flaxseed, and beer.
Flour accounted for nearly half of the total value of exports and wheat a good deal more, as well. However, one would not be prone to believe that “bread” too was an important export of Colonial Philadelphia, but it was nevertheless.
Even today throughout the Pennsylvania Dutch country there still exists a good number of outdoor bakeovens as these quiet sentinels of an earlier age appear to be rather crude and clumsy to the modern housewife, and yet, they are not in the slightest. Great-Grandmother and maybe even Grandmother could astound one with tales of the capacity and quality of goods which she was able to produce in her bakeoven.
Today, very few if any, with the exception of Mennonite women, bake as part of their general routine, but no one bakes their own bread all the time anymore.
The principle of the bake oven is an easy one as it operates from retained heat. On Friday, the traditional baking day, a member of the family would build a fire on the large hearth of the bakeoven. This would be done early in the morning as the bakeoven must be fired for about three hours. After a short three hours have passed, the fire is raked apart and the hot embers spread evenly over the brick hearth. The flue of the chimney is then closed to trap the heat, and any excess heat is allowed to escape through the vent holes on the closed cast iron door to the oven.
As soon as the housewife is ready to bake, she opens the oven door and removes the hot ambers and ash by raking them forward. Most ovens have a chute at the mouth of the oven where the ambers slide to the base of the bakcoven where they burn out. However, if there is no chute, the ashes are raked out of the mouth of the oven to the floor below where they are raked to a corner. This type of an oven usually has a fireplace in front of it so the smoldering ashes are no problem.
At this point the housewife may choose to clean the brick hearth of the oven further by using a wet rag on the end of a pole quickly pulled over the hearth, and now she is ready to bake. The bricks and clay above and below the crown and hearth of the oven will retain enough heat from the morning firing to last all afternoon. The experienced housewife knows by sense of touch how hot her oven is and can regulate the heat by opening the flue to the hearth. Even the door can be opened if the oven is too hot, and occasionally a wife will throw flour on the hearth to see how hot it is, if the flour burns instantly it is too hot.
Bread is baked first, and since many ovens have shelves built on either side of the entrance, the dough can raise there from the heat that escapes the oven door. Loaves of bread dough were once raised in baskets made from rye straw bound with wooden oak strips. The raised dough was placed on the bakeoven hearth with a long handled wooden paddle called a peel. Contrary to popular believe or practice, loaves of bread baked in the early days were “round,” whether baked on a hearth directly or in a tin pan. When a large batch of bread had been baked, it was transported to the kitchen in a large basket shaped like a tray made of willow in yesteryear, with handles at each end. Pies, cakes, and cookies were next to be baked and then stored for eating that week, until it was time to bake again the following Friday.
There are old-timers who remember how to operate a bakeoven, and some people have been known to use their bakeovens to barbeque chickens and other meats. In my newest edition of True Grit magazine, they offer a layout plan for one’s own construction of a modern bakeoven. The fact of the matter is that the firing of a bakeoven is easy, but one must be careful that he or she does not over fire the oven, as it will get too hot. The bakeoven as it is found in the Pennsylvania Dutch region is an outstanding invention for its day, far superior to any found anywhere else in America. Among the frontier farmsteads introduced to the area, besides the large frontier fireplaces, there was no other invention than the outdoor bakeovens that intrigued the native Indians more, as European families transferred their white man’s culture to the virgin forests of Pennsylvania.
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
