Most Germanic houses built in Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries had bake ovens; it was almost a requisite for Pennsylvnia Dutch dwellings.
When kitchen stoves replaced hearth cooking in the 19th Century, most farm wives continued to use der Backoffe since the ovens of the new kitchen stoves were relatively small. Not only were they small, but with wire racks instead of a stone hearth, the bread had to be baked in metal pans instead of on the hearth floor. Also, everyone said baking from the brick ovens just tasted better, so in New Hanover they were widely used well into the 20th Century.
To prepare bread for the oven, you needed a dough trough and a dough trough scraper. Rectangular wooden boxes 3 to 4 feet long with outward-sloping sides and a removable top were called dough trays, dough troughs or dough boxes in English and Backmult in the dialect. These were used on a table.
Some few were larger, had legs and stood on the floor. These covered wooden boxes were for mixing and kneading dough and letting it rise the first time. The removable lid, turned over, was a handy place to knead and shape the dough into loaves before placing it in the white linen-lined straw baskets for the final rising.
The bread dough was mixed Thursday night and left to rise in a dough box by the kitchen hearth. Friday morning the dough was again kneaded and placed into round rye straw baskets to rise again.
Baking baskets were made of rye straw coils laced together with thin oak splints. Each basket was about a foot in diameter with 4-inch-high sloping sides. One basket was required for each loaf. Since all the loaves were set to rise at the same time, each basket could be used for only one loaf per week.
The housewife would turn each loaf upside down on a long-handled wooden paddle called a peel, Schiesser in the dialect, and transfer them to the back of the oven. There was a smaller peel with a sharp edge used to place red ware pie dishes, custards or the occasional shaped little cakes (they had no word for “cookie”) near the door as they baked faster. Every house had a Henck, hanging shelf in the cellar, or a pie safe to keep pies safe from flies and rodents.
Contrary to popular belief, The Pennsylvania Dutch did not bring with them the practice of baking fruit pies, AP cake, Shoo-fly pie and other pastries which have become identified with the culture. There is no Dutch word for “pie;” they just pronounced the English “pie” as “Boi.”
In her presentation titled “The Dutchman and his Pies,” Goschenhoppen historian Nancy Roan notes that pies were unknown to the German immigrants and are an American creation. They seem to have been adapted from the English raised-dough, open-top fruit pies. But by the later 19th Century, every conceivable fruit and berry combination went into pie filling and pie was eaten at every meal, although we would find the portions to be small. By this time sugar was more available for a flavoring.
Everyone sang the praises of the breads and pies made in the old brick bake ovens as being far superior to those that came from the new iron kitchen stoves.
After the baking was done there was a good bit of residual heat in the oven, and this was used to dry fruit of every type as well as corn. Usually there were three large wooden drying trays. Two had a rounded side to conform to the oval oven walls and the middle one, slipped in last, was a rectangle. Sometimes if it wasn’t fruit-drying season, the firewood for the next baking would be placed in the oven so it would be thoroughly dry for the next firing.
In his book “The Pennsylvania German Farm Family,” Amos Long Jr. relates the following bake oven story. A wealthy New Yorker purchased a farm in the Lehigh Valley that he was having refurbished. When he ordered the Dutch workers to tear down the old bake oven, they refused, saying it was verhexed – bewitched. It was the home of spirits, they said, that were trying to communicate. It seems that bread came out of the oven with clear letters raised from the bottom of the loaves. Assuring the Dutchmen that he would take full responsibility with the spirits, he persuaded them to take down the oven.
“When the stone floor was uncovered it was found that at the back of the oven were foot stones from a nearby cemetery on which were carved the initials of the persons who had been buried there. When the cemetery was modernized the foot stones had been removed to facilitate the moving of the plots and the thrifty mason who built the bake oven had used them letter side up.”
The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Historical Society. Call Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with comments.
