A single cycle of firing and baking
If we presume that St. Benedict's allowance of a daily
pound of bread for each monk applied to the monastery's
serfs as well, the monks' bakery on the Plan of St. Gall
would have to have been capable of producing 250 to 270
pounds of bread per day.[568]
An analysis of the dimensions
of its oven and the amount of space required for this output
discloses that this volume of bread could be produced in a
single cycle of firing and baking.[569]
A passage in Ekkehart's Casus sancti Galli, which has
consistently been misconstrued, reads that the monastery
of St. Gall had an oven (clibanum) capable of baking a
thousand loaves of bread at once and a bronze kettle
(lebete eneo) and drying kiln (tarra avenis) capable of
holding one hundred bushels of oats.[570]
This is not a
statement of fact, but a passage in a speech by Abbot
Solomon III, which Ekkehart himself refers to as "boastful"
and "fraudulent."[571]