Australian history in the baking: the rebirth of a Scotch oven.(Culinary Distinction)

Ovens and progress

Writing in 1891, Italian cookery authority Pellegrino Artusi complained:

 
   If I knew who invented the oven, I'd erect a monument to him at my 
   own expense. He certainly deserves it far more than many others 
   who've been honoured in this monument-crazed century. (1) 

From Artusi's culinary perspective, the evolution of the oven was a story of great cultural significance and one overdue for some public recognition by his countrymen. Moreover, such an unremarked evolution may have proved particularly poignant for Artusi, as he witnessed first-hand the onrush of change that modernisation brought to cookery, baking and oven technology during the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Large-scale wood-fired stone or brick baking ovens, heated by fire from within, had for centuries performed admirably well in terms of baking quality. However, by the early twentieth century, the modern fuels of gas and electricity had overtaken timber, charcoal, coal and coke (the latter being favoured in the largest Scottish bakeries, before 1905) as the preferred means of firing commercial ovens. With the new energy resources came new ovens, facilitating the drive towards the speedier mass production of baked goods. (2) Baking was becoming an industrial process of massive scale, and innovation in design brought increasingly efficient (bread) ovens to the market. In quick succession, drawplate, moving floor, reel, rotary and, finally, conveyor ovens thoroughly outmoded the old 'peel', or 'Scotch', ovens. (3) Ongoing mechanisation (fan-forced and steam-injected ovens) further facilitated twenty-four-hour production routines, and factory-processed yeast instead of traditional sourdough starters both trimmed production time, contributing to the overall transformation of the bakery craft into a semi-automated industry. Specialisation in oven design also meant that ovens were purpose-built to suit different jobs; biscuit ovens, for example.

As a consequence of such innovations in oven design, the commercial baking oven would less and less resemble its domestic counterpart and its wood-, coal- or coke-fired predecessors in all but the most primary function: the power to cook.

Taste, ovens and the history of technology

The connection between what we taste and the technologies we use for cooking (and eating) is seldom the subject of scholars' attention. Histories of culinary technology (appliances, stoves, kitchens) usually discuss changes in design, their social and technical causes and effects, and the putative benefits of these changes with respect to economy, efficiency, speed, convenience, and so on. Seldom, however, is any direct mention made of the relationship between gustatory taste and this technology.

Moreover, the cultural and epistemological place, importance and use of sensory taste in the west have not been investigated to any great degree. It is clear that this neglect is partly due to the fact that, outside the realm of culinary endeavour and gastronomy, taste has been denigrated (particularly in science-based disciplines, in philosophy and in history-based discourses). To a degree, this reflects the persistence of the Platonic conception of taste and smell as being 'lower' senses. According to this logic, taste is related to self-interest, to carnal desire; thereby, it compromises the 'objective', rational faculties. Taste is also considered to be too 'subjective', and therefore also counter-productive in relation to understanding (reason), the latter being better facilitated by the 'higher' senses of sight and hearing. (4)

Yet the knowledge furnished by taste cannot justifiably be described as being limited to the subjective, nor does the use of the faculty of taste necessarily exclude reason or rationality (however these may be construed). Indeed, all the senses are highly socialised modes of knowing the world, mediated by technology, and which are culturally quite specific. In light of this, questions of the relative 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' of the senses are onerous.

This article explores the historical relationship between taste and oven technology. It illustrates how taste (as a mode of knowing) has contributed to western culture in terms of knowledge, understanding and corporeal experience by connecting taste to a generic style of baking oven; yet it also suggests that such knowledge was passed over in the rush to modernise. This historical reading of taste is justified because the basic design principles upon which ancient, domed, stone ovens developed remains partly preserved in the form of the so-called Scotch oven, which was commonly used in commercial bakeries during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and which are still utilised by bakers today. Scotch ovens thereby provide a tangible link to the tastes of the past, a notion that will be explored along with the history and genealogy of the Scotch oven.

The Scotch oven

In Australia, as elsewhere, 'Scotch oven' has been a commonly used term for over a century. It designates a particular style of wood, coal or coke fired commercial baker's oven made of brick, with forged iron fittings (including the firebox door and main door, or 'stock', and its surround). The ovens stand approximately two metres high by four metres wide and five metres deep, giving a total mass of about forty cubic metres. The oven cavity itself is, of course, significantly smaller at roughly two and half metres square, with an 'arched crown [the oven cavity's ceiling] nearly three feet from the sole [the floor of the oven], the latter being constructed of large stone slabs or bakery tiles'. (5) The stone sole and crown can absorb a great deal of heat during the heating process (brick is a poor conductor but an efficient radiator), thus ensuring efficient baking. (6) Scotch ovens also incorporate substantial amounts of sand, which is used as insulation between layers of brick in the roof and floor sections, thus contributing to the oven's total thermal mass, a factor vital to the cooking process and the quality of the baked goods. Indeed, the tastes of the past have arguably left a material trace of their history in the ruins of the old Scotch ovens that can still be found in many rural townships all over the western world.

Perfected for the commercial baking of bread in the early nineteenth century (Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopaedie includes an illustration of a similar style of oven, circa 1750), Scotch ovens were the commercial bakery's standard for almost a century. Precisely how, why or from what date the term 'Scotch oven' was coined remains uncertain. Whether the term 'Scotch' actually refers to Scotland or indirectly to the Scots (it has been suggested that the inherent economy of the oven might have been regarded as a reflection of a traditional Scottish frugality) is also not entirely clear. (7) Curiously, there is no entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for Scotch oven, nor one in the Australian Macquarie Dictionary, yet in both countries many hundreds of these ovens proved to be crucial to the success of the baking industry.

There is ample evidence that the term was widely used. Authoritative industry-related books published in the United Kingdom (and Australasia) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries refer to Scotch ovens; whereas in other reference works, it is not used at all, being replaced in one instance by 'side-flue oven.' (8) In …