Ovens in France
A typical communal bread oven in the Haute Alps, near Gap, France. The oven itself is located in the back of the building. The sole purpose for this building is to house the oven. While the oven is at the back of the building, the chimney is in the front, over the front door. Smoke and gasses are pulled out of the oven along the building ceiling, which is black with smoke, and then finally vented up the chimney.
The bread ovens in this region are made of stone. This photograph is not of the oven in the building, above. This is the only oven I saw out of dozens I inspected that has a ceiling vent.
Wood fired bread ovens are traditionally fired with faggots. In the winter one sees piles of prunings by the side of the road. After the baker is finished baking, faggots for the next firing are loaded into the oven. In this way they are as dry as possible for the next fire. The drier the wood is, and the faster it burns, and the more heat is gives off. A large oven, like the one pictured above, is fired from cold to bread temperature in approximately two hours.
In one village, again, still in the region near Gap, I found an oven that seemed to be the home of a group of retirees. The other village ovens I visited were tidy. This one was a lived-in mess. I loved it! It reminded me of my own oven and, being honest, the mess that sometimes surrounds it. Notice the mix of scrap wood and small logs.
The fire goes through several phases. It starts out slow and clean and then often becomes smokey. As the fire gains heat, it stops smoking and reaches this stage when the he gasses on the roof of the oven ignite. I think of it as the plasma stage. In this picture you can see that the faggots have almost entirely burned to embers but the oven is so that that it is filled with burning gasses. These burning gasses are of secondary combustion of a well-regulated modern wood stove. Once this fire burns down the oven walls will be white.
And, of course, at the end of it all, what one has is fabulous bread.