Clay oven
[3] The earthen oven has historically been used to bake flatbreads such as taftoon (Persian: تافتون), taboon bread and laffa, and has been in widespread use in the greater Middle East for centuries.
[5] Gustaf Dalman (1855–1941), describing the material culture of Palestine in the early 20th century, photographed several types of clay ovens which he saw in use there.
[6] Of those ovens used for baking bread, there was the tabun shaped like a large, bottomless earthenware pot turned upside down and fastened permanently to the ground.
The pot-shaped contour was wider at the base and narrower at the top, where the opening was, used both for kindling the fire, and for inserting dough for baking.
[10] The word tannour is often used in Hebrew (תנור) Persian (تَنور) and Arabic languages in a generic sense, meaning, a place where bread is baked by fire.
[4] Such ovens were almost always built within baking rooms (Arabic: al-daymeh = الديمة) or rustic kitchens adjoining a courtyard.
[21][22][23] In some societies, such as in the villages around Aleppo, in Syria, the earthen oven (tannour) was vaulted and egg-shaped, the opening of which was made in the front, and the entire structure built above-ground by having it propped-up upon an earth and stone base.
The dome-shaped oven in western societies was often built upon a stone and earth plinth to make it higher and easier to use, without having to bend over.
[citation needed] The furn is a furnace-like oven, the name being a loanword borrowed from the Greek (φούρνος, fūrnos)[24] and earlier Latin, and which, according to Maimonides, was also made of clay.
[33] The furn in modern parlance is also associated with being a "public bakery," where flat-loaves of bread are baked wholesale to be sold in market, or where, in some countries, local villagers bring there certain produce, such as heaps of green chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) with their husks for roasting (when placed either in a clay oven or upon a convex griddle, known as ṣāj),[34] or the flat round bread made with an impression containing omelettes.
[35] It is still used today by Bedouins and other Arabs in Israel-Palestine, as well as by the indigenous peoples of Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq, although the ingredients used in making their bread differ.
[38] In the early 20th-century, German ethnographer Carl Rathjens described the ovens that he had seen in the Old City of Sana'a, and which were similarly constructed by Jews and Arabs alike: The product of Jewish potters, they (i.e. the clay ovens) are made of burnt clay and look like round pots without bottoms, being open at both ends and having a semi-circular hole on one side.
Through this hole, wood, charcoal or dried dung is fed into the stove, and the cooking pots are placed on the upper opening.
[42] Occasionally, there was no need for a large fire, such as when they baked laḥūḥ (the sponge-like flat bread), or when roasting kernels, legumes and grain, and things similar.
[42] Briquettes prepared from the waste droppings of animals were also used to light a fire in the clay oven, and which are processed and dried by the Arab villagers.
[43] In the case of a tabun oven where there was no top opening, a layer of fuel (usually dried manure) is spread on the outside of the shell and lid.
[43] In Yemen, whenever the woman of the house wished to light a fire in her tannour, she would take-up a little of each kind of wood kindling and arrange them in the oven.
[42] The most important splinters for lighting were the jiʿdin, which is a bush where there was a sticky, elastic-like flammable substance between its bark and wood.
[42] When the smoke resides, the lid is removed and chunks of dough are hand flattened and placed directly on the limestones (in the case of tabun oven).
[citation needed] In Yemen, when the fire was kindled in the larger tannour and all pot-filled dishes began to boil, the flames were allowed to die down a little.
[42] The flattened dough is applied to the inner-wall of the oven, after the wall is dampened with a wet cloth, allowing for adhesion.
The dough was spread out firmly upon the maḫbazeh, until it was sufficiently thin, and was then applied to the interior wall of the earthen oven, so as to bake it on its obverse side.
If there was much to bake, the householder would put within the mouth of the oven a dry piece of wood so that the flame of its burning will cook and cause to steam the outer layer of the bread.
[42] When he finished baking, he then placed within the oven a knotted piece of wood, of the kind which are hardest to burn (Arabic: عُقدة, romanized: ʿuqdeh, lit.
[42] In Jewish culture, especially on days where it was impossible to build a fire, but where prolonging the existing heat of the oven was necessary, the hot coals were, in advance, pushed to one side and covered over in ashes, while the entire clay oven was covered over with a larger earthenware vessel, to which old rags were added along the edges to seal the heat within it.
[49] In the Land of Israel during classical times, the baking oven (Hebrew: tannour) was constructed in similar fashion as the tabun (popularly in use amongst Arabs).
Like the tabun, it too was made like unto a large, bottomless eathenware pot, turned upside down and fixed permanently onto the ground by plastering it with clay,[50][51][52] usually in a family's courtyard where there was a baking hut.
The soil is wetted and made into a thick clay mixed with chopped stubble and straw from harvested wheat.
Such ovens were made with thick walls, as much as 15.24 centimetres (6.00 in), by adding to its outer shell and wall a cob of wet clay (or black earth) consisting of an aggregate of dried and burnt donkey or horse manure ground to a powdery ash (about 40%), a smaller portion of chopped straw and stubble, along with lime and sand or gravel.
This is done, not only to harden the clay and to enable dough to cling to the inner oven-wall after its second firing, but also to temper the oven so that it can better retain heat.
