Bread-Making Tools

From earliest civilizations, the technology of bread baking has been relatively simple. European colonists brought a tradition of unleavened flatbreads, adapted to New World ingredients, and baked in the fire’s embers as ash cake. Alternatively, cornmeal johnnycakes used hearth griddles over coals and wrought iron turners. More complex European yeasted breads depended on large brick ovens, covered bake kettles, or Dutch ovens heated with flames or glowing embers. Their overnight risings required large, wooden, lidded dough troughs and bowls or earthenware containers with cloth coverings. Heavy tin (actually tinned sheet iron) bowls made with close-fitting but ventilated lids became available before the Civil War.