A communal oven near Gap, France. Photograph taken in 2004. Note the newspaper sealing the oven door. Two families were sharing the firing of the oven on the day I visited it. Each family bakes once a quarter and freeze the bread the same day it is baked.

The most comon European-style traditional bread oven is an enclosure made of a refractory material like adobe, rock, or brick that is heated by a fire burning within the enclosure. After the walls of the oven are hot the fire is swept out of the oven and the bread is put it in. The bread bakes on the heat stored within the floor and walls of the oven itself.

The bread oven was inextricablly twined with the lives of the peoples of Europe and the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years. It is within our own lifetimes that the final close has come to the ancient life-pattern — growing grain, taking it to the local mill, and baking it in a wood fired oven. In the following pages I describe how bread ovens are used, and I document a few of the European ovens I have seen, mostly ovens in France, Lithuanian, and Italy.