In bygone times, many Scandinavian households had wood-fired outdoor stone or brick ovens, often built a bit away from the house, as the risk of fire was alarming in old wooden houses. Read on and learn more about traditional Scandinavian wood-fired bake ovens.
These outdoor ovens worked on the same principle: the wood was burnt to embers directly on the oven floor and pushed aside when the oven was thoroughly hot. You then baked on the hearth, as long as you wanted keeping a small fire going in the back. (On estates and at vicarages, the ovens were built as a separate bakehouse, where less fortunate parishioners could bring their loaves and flatbreads to bake.
Man has been baking bread in ovens like these for millennia, and they produce the best, crisped and most flavored bread – there is no comparison with anything baked in a modern oven. Often the fumes are scented with ling, or dried leaves, adding even more flavor.
Since ancient times, bread has also been baked in earth ovens, and still is in some parts of the world. In principle, this is a hole in the ground, clad with flat stones, and with a dome on top supported by wicker and clay. A colleague of mine said that the best bread she had ever baked was in such an oven built in the Danish Antiquity center in Lejre, south of Copenhagen, where they have recreated a village from every age since the Stone Age. She was teaching Viking cooking in an enormous cauldron on an open fire to feed the museum guests. Bones from all kinds of domestic animals and bunches of herbs were protruding from the surface and down in the soup were cabbages, parsnips, water mint, caraway and bread beans. The bread was made from emmer and sourdough and wrapped in huge leaves to keep it from scorching on the hot stones.
This type of oven was not necessarily used more than once a month – to heat a big oven was expensive – so the preferred breads were long-keeping, dense rye breads, wholegrain leaves and a huge assortment of crispbreads. They were baked from whatever was at hand – cheap rye and barley or maybe oats; nowadays the crispbread is usually baked from wheat and rye because we have lost the taste for the rougher cereals as we have become richer. The traditional breads are very good, though, and are returning to favor, as home bakeries are popping up like mushrooms after rain, all over Scandinavia.
When a large wood-fired oven is lit, the temperature is extremely high at first – ideal for crispbread and wheat breads. When the temperature drops, it’s time to bake the rye breads that need a longer time at a lower heat. Last come the small cakes, and sometimes an extra drying of the crispbread. The flatbread is either dry or soft and eaten like Middle Eastern breads, wrapped around smoked meats, Surströmming, jam or cheese.
Traditional Scandinavian Wood-Fired Bake Ovens, written by Tor Kjolberg
Feature image (on top): Wood-fired oven at Egge Museum, North Trøndelag, Norway