page fifty-eight

The Bakehouse

In the Forge the fire was kept going all morning and the iron went in and out of it. A baker's oven works the other way round. It is fired once, before light, with the door open; then the fire is raked out, the floor swabbed and the door shut, and from that moment the oven only ever cools. Everything that has to be baked today, the bread and then whatever the neighbours carry in, has to be fitted into that one long fall of heat.

—

—

—

Now—
Clock—
The fire—
The crown—
The dough—
The floor—
The door—
Stack—

Keys: A a faggot, R rake out, S swab, T flour, H arm, Z hurry, 1–4 load or draw.

    Day
    —

    Every day is a different village, oven, stack of faggots, barm and set of neighbours.

    What is real here and what is not

    The way the oven was fired and judged, and the order things went into it, are real. The village, the oven and the neighbours are the day's number; the heat in the brick is a small model, sized to give the right sort of hours.

    1. 01

      Firing a brick oven

      Until gas and coal-fired side-flue ovens spread late in the century, most village bread was baked in a brick oven heated by burning wood inside it: faggots of furze, brushwood or ash, pushed in through the mouth with the door open so the fire could draw. When the oven was hot the embers were raked out with a long iron scraper, the floor was swabbed with a wet mop on a pole, and the door was shut so the heat in the walls could even out before the dough went in.

    2. 02

      Judging it by eye and by hand

      Bakers judged the heat without instruments. The soot left on the inside of the dome by the first smoky flames burns away as the brick gets hot, so a crown that has gone from black to white is a sign the oven is getting there. A pinch of flour thrown on the floor browns faster the hotter it is. And many bakers simply put a bare arm in at the mouth and counted how long they could bear it. The crown and the flour both read the surface of the brick, though, and a quick hot fire of furze can whiten the crown long before the heat has soaked into the depth of the oven.

    3. 03

      Baking in a falling oven

      A wood-fired oven is hottest just after it is cleaned and cools for the rest of the day. Bakers used that. Bread went in first, at the top heat. Then the oven was let out to neighbours, who brought pies, joints and puddings to be baked for a penny or two, since few cottages had an oven of their own. Cakes went in when it was slacker, and rusks, meringues and things to dry went in last of all. A dish that wants a gentle heat browns before it is cooked through in a hot oven; a loaf put into a slack one comes out pale and heavy.

    4. 04

      What the page simplifies

      The oven is two lumps of heat, a thin surface the fire and dough touch and a deep mass behind it, where a real oven has a gradient through every brick. Each faggot gives the same heat, every dish has one right temperature, and the dough proves at a steady rate. The bakehouse clock runs four times as fast as yours, or sixteen when hurried. The prices of bread follow the shape of the century (dear in the war years, cheaper after the Corn Laws went in 1846) without being any particular town's assize.

    Fifty-eight rooms, and one number doing all the work. Today it builds an oven, stacks the faggots by the door, sets the dough rising overnight and decides which neighbours will knock with their dinners.