While the title of this blog is Before Our Time I would not like you to believe for one minute that I wish to live in the past. Oh no, I am quite attached to having water on demand rather than trudging to the nearest stream to pound my laundry with a rock. I am also quite relieved that I do not have to walk bare feet onto the moors to collect peat for the fire. And the very thought that I may have lived in a time when I was denied even the rudimentary elements of an education gives me shivers.
However, at our annual neighbourhood get together this Christmas our thoughts turned to a very useful thing of before our time - the communal oven.
While the average kitchen could cater for normal family meals the Christmas turkey and ham are often too large to be cooked in our ovens. We then resort to either renovating our kitchens to commercial standards, buying a monstrosity of a BBQ or foregoing large cuts of meat. How useful it would be to have a large communal oven down the road.
Communal village ovens have been part of Mediterranean and middle eastern life for thousands of years. They still exist in some places, although many were destroyed during WWII. Villagers would bake their weekly supply of bread or cook a celebratory meal in these ovens, often alongside other villagers, making it a social experience. Where a purpose-built oven was not available the local baker's oven may have been used.
Communal ovens not only provide a practical service but help build a sense of community too. Traditionally, being wood-fired and located outdoors, the communal oven would take time to reach operating temperature and thus was suited to cooking en masse. A communal bread oven which opened in Cringila Community Park, Wollongong in 2005 has become a focal point for the local indigenous and ethnic groups in the area.
Perhaps a reader can correct me here, but while we have a tradition of communal BBQs I don't believe we have a tradition of communal ovens in modern Australia. There is evidence, however, that indigenous tribes used communal cooking facilities. The Wathaurong people, whose tribal lands take in areas south of Geelong in Victoria, cooked in communal ovens called minne.
I'd like to propose that in honour of glazing a full-size ham at Christmas or a turkey to feed fourteen relatives we introduce the communal oven to our suburbs and towns. On Christmas morn we can all meet over a beer or glass of champers as our turkeys bake or our hams glaze and the neighbourhood children play nearby.
I'd love to hear from readers with experiences of communal ovens both here and overseas.
* image from here. Read about the story of a communal oven built in a park in Toronto.
16 comments:
That is something that could really work here in the mountains and one I will give some thought to.
The little island we have been to often in Greece used the baker's oven as a communal oven - the smells that would waft through the village - divine!
I wouldn't mind letting others use MY kitchen as a communal oven... as long as I didn't have to cook.
(I'm a bit over it at the moment...)
I'd love a communal oven that woked from fire heat. Roasts, pizza, breads, all the other things that taste better in a fire / wood fired oven. I winder if we could build one in the park...
I wonder who would clean it, would there be a roster? Who's turn is it? "Your goat is taking too long.. I just want to roast my chook...."
Its a bit like communal BBQ's at the park, the closest we have to something like that...
Not sure that I am for this. I have seen what happens to communal sinks in staff rooms. When no one officially 'owns' it people take advantage and don't clean up after themselves!
My understanding is that, historically, there was a fee to use traditional communal ovens. I presume this fee went towards maintenance and cleaning.
I also understand that they operate with a roster of sorts.
I'm not that into the concept, actually.
I can imagine the squabbling over a communal facility, and all the petty council rules and regulations that would spew forth about cleaning it, fire hazards, odours, smoke, waste, fat build-up, hours of use, noise, flies, food particles attracting mice, blah blah blah. (Yes — I lived in Subiaco!)
I'll stick to having a biggish oven in the kitchen, and if I'm catering to a crowd and it absolutely has to be baked/roasted, I'll delegate and get someone else to cook some at their place and bring it over.
Or roast/bake the big stuff in the barbie.
I've never heard of this! I say we forget Christmas/holiday cooking altogether and just feast on fruit and nuts.
You know, in the early settlement in Sydney - for probably the first hundred years or so - the houses in The Rocks didn't have ovens. Instead, they used the ovens of the bakers. On Sundays they would take their joints of meat to the bakers to go in the ovens as the embers were dying down, to the pick them up, cooked, after Church for Sunday lunch.
Oh I know, I am a FOUNT of wisdom.
Kim, what fabulous history! I must look that up.
Lesley, I can see that a simple communal oven would probably be doused in over-regulation in many of our local council areas which would be a shame.
I love the idea of a world in which you could put your roast alongside all your neighbours' into a communal oven, go off to church and return to collect the cooked meat with no disputes as to whose chook was whose..or which leg of beef belonged to whom. Or no arguments over who had the best cooking position in the oven.
And, of course, it would be a world in which there would be no public liability issues in communal cooking, and no red tape and regulations about health standards and cleaning, and having a certified food handler present at all times while the communal oven operates.
It would be a world where neighbours would stand around the oven and chat as they removed this week's roast, or bread, or casseroles.
Alas, I think that world exists before our time.
On a trip overseas in the 90's with a german-born friend of mine we eventually washed up in her home town where her grandmother and extended family still reside. We went for a walk around the village and I saw people emerging with some hot wrapped items - I immediately thought, "... oooh goody a bakery lets go and buy something!" but was told that it was the "communal bake house". Even being told in English I still didn't register what she was talking about as I had never heard of such things or that they were still in use. I have been fascinated by them ever since.
Following on from Nutmeg's lovely story about communal bakehouses in Europe here a further link:
http://www.atg-oxford.co.uk/trust.php?ID=10
Another link: http://www.pyromasse.ca/montchenie_e.html
I found myself agreeing with Dee from Downunder. The idea of all of this is great, but you have to be willing to put up with everyone's else s ways of doing things. I think these days we are so spoiled by our solitude and community gatherings are shyed away from. In comparison to days gone by, I mean. Just rambling! You both have an award over at my place!
Sunday cooking in the baker's oven is where the term "bonne femme" meaning "good housewife" originated in France. Sounds impressive when serving a dinner party e.g. "pommes bonne femme". Guests tend not to know it really means all in the oven together!
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