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  • From: SJC <indexer AT localnet.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Bread oven
  • Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:11:56 -0400

Gene GeRue wrote:
.......I am mulling the design of a raised fireplace that would bake, heat the house, and be pretty to sit at.

In the 70s we had a number of agricultural exchangees from Poland who stayed with us for 2 years at a clip. The most interesting were those from western Poland, in that area which has been passed back and forth from Poland/Russia several times over the years. They all described ovens/stoves/heating devices such as would fit all the above. The most interesting of them, and one who is still a friend, came from what even he described as a very "old" area of Poland, and the stoves there actually formed, or took place of, the wall between kitchen and bedroom: on the bedroom side were sleeping benches which were the far side of the kitchen stove, which had both a bake oven and a firebox under the cooktop, plus an area which held a removable clay pot of some sort that held water for heating. The stove at Eugene's parents' house had 4 fireboxes, one accessible from outdoors, and 2 chimneys, one 'short' and one convoluted, which was the one that ran alongside the sleeping benches. I used to have some pictures of 2 of these stoves, one in his family's home and one a brother of his had built. One had designs (and shallow ledges, little alcoves) sculpted into the clay outlayer and the other, older stove had tiles of several sorts, some appearing to me to have been reused from another project. Both qualified as works of art to my mind, but all functional.

Everytime I hear someone describe something as 'all-in'one' I think of these stoves. I've read of the kachelofen stoves, but these seem not to considerably more complex. There were, as recently as the 50s, still people building these stoves, according to Eugene.

SJ, in Maine, where the weather has turned downright nasty




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