University of Virginia Library

V.7.5

BAKING OVENS

On the Plan of St. Gall there are three baking ovens (fig.
382A-C): one in the Monks' Bake and Brew House
(caminus); one in the Bake and Brew House for Distinguished
Guests (fornax); and one in the Bake and Brew
House for Pilgrims and Paupers (fornax). They have diameters,
respectively, of 10 feet, 7½ feet, and 7½ feet.

[ILLUSTRATION]

387. KARKÓW, POLAND. BEHAIM CODEX (1505). BAKEHOUSE WITH OVEN, KETTLE, AND KNEADING TABLES

JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, CODEX PICTURATUS, fol. 246. [after Winkler, 1941, Pl. 4]

The Behaim Codex is a compilation of privileges, oath formulae, and guild ordinances written in German. It is named from an annotation on
the title page by the clerk and notary of Kraków, Balthasar Behaim (d. 1508), which reads: Anno domini 1505 consummatum. Written
and illuminated in strong and radiant colors by a local artist, doubtlessly of German descent, the manuscript has stylistic roots in a school of
illumination that flourished in Augsburg and Nürnburg, and was strongly influenced by the work of Albrecht Dürer. The representation of the
bakehouse appears on folio 246. Its title is written in bold red letters. (Winklers' color plate suggests that the roof may have been sheeted in
copper.)

[ILLUSTRATION]

388. TÜBINGEN, WURTTEMBURG, GERMANY. UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, CODEX M. D. 2, fol. 29V

This detail shows the planet-children of Saturn in furious, cheerful dispatch of the tasks of baking: milling, kneading dough and setting loaves
to rise, loading the familiar domed oven. Pastries may have been the fate of the caged birds. (Panofsky and Saxl treat the complex iconography
of this illumination in Dürer's "Melencolia I", Leipzig, 1923, 61 [Studien der Bibliothek Warburg]. The codex dates to the late 15th century.

The baking of bread is one of the most ancient of human
arts. Calcined remains of unleavened bread made from
crushed grain were found in Swiss lake dwellings that date
from the early Stone Age.[265] Reference by implication to the
custom of leavening (i.e., admixing to the dough a substance
that produces gases, thus causing the bread to rise)
is made in Genesis, where it is said of Lot that "he made
them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread."[266] One very
early baking method, perhaps the first devised, was that of
placing the dough on a heated flat or convex stone and
covering it with hot ashes.[267] The size and number of loaves
that could be baked in this manner was limited by the shape
of the stone. To bake in quantity required the invention of
the oven, a round or ovoid chamber that held the heat and
allowed it to be distributed over a wider surface. One of the
earliest Central European ovens was excavated in the Stone
Age settlement of Taubried, on Lake Federsee, Germany
(fig. 383).[268] The walls of the baking chamber were made of
daubed wattle. The opening in front was covered with a
removable shutter, probably of wood and cloth.

Between the third millennium B.C. and the middle of the
nineteenth century A.D., neither the shape of the oven nor
the method of baking changed significantly. A circular oven
of baked brick, dating from the beginning of the second
millennium B.C., was found by André Parrot[269] during his
excavation of the Palace of Mari, Mesopotamia, (fig. 386)
in a bathroom of the quarters of the superintendent of
the palace (cf. fig. 372). A Roman oven shaped exactly like
this one is shown on a frieze of the monument of the baker
Eurysaces at Rome, dating from the first century B.C. (fig.
385).[270] On the left, the baker is placing the loaves in the
oven. On the right, four men are kneading dough on a table.

[ILLUSTRATION]

389. A, B, C, D PLAN OF ST. GALL. KITCHEN STOVES AND BREWING RANGES

In each building the stove is indicated as a square, with or without openings for pots; in all probability the "fornax super arcus" of the Monks'
Kitchen was the type in the other kitchens. The brewing ranges show corner openings for vats. The association of baking and brewing facilities
under one roof is traditional and consistent on the Plan; functional interdependence of the two crafts can be shown (see below, pp. 249ff).

Primitive clay ovens of the Taubried type (fig. 383) are
still in use today[271] and were unquestionably common in
medieval times. Figure 384 shows the reconstruction of a
Langobardic oven of this type from the first century A.D.[272]
A handsome illustration in the Behaim Codex in Krakow
(fig. 387)[273] shows the baker placing the loaves in the oven,
his helper shaping them, and a woman throwing some salt
or herbs into the dough rising in a kettle on the floor in
front of the oven. The oven is built into the corner of this
copper-roofed shed. The smoke rises from a round hole in
the top of the oven and passes through a dormer window
in the roof out into the open. Figure 388 shows a baking
scene that occurs among the representations of the planet
children of Saturn in a manuscript in the University Library
at Tübingen.[274] Here again the smoke escapes through circular
openings in the top of the baking chamber. Ovens of
this same design are found in other medieval illuminations.[275]

[ILLUSTRATION]

389. E, F, G PLAN OF ST. GALL. KITCHEN STOVES AND BREWING RANGES

But an oven with a chimney is shown in the December
representation of the Grimani Breviary.[276]

In conformity with the pictorial tradition reviewed above,
we have reconstructed the St. Gall ovens as more or less
circular chambers, the larger one with a smoke flue, the two
smaller ones without (cf. figs. 402 and 394).