SC - period ovens
Christina van Tets
cjvt at hotmail.com
Fri Jun 16 10:50:22 PDT 2000
Hello the List!
A couple of weeks ago I was at a krak (crusader castle) which still had the
kitchen pretty much intact. Well, roofless, but it was mostly there. There
were 3 beehive/igloo ovens all in a row, about 3 feet across, and maybe
about 2 1/2 feet high, plus there was a fireplace next to them, just a small
one about 2' square. They were all built into the same wall, and
consequently shared one very wide chimney. There was a large room which
held the mouths of the ovens, and a small room maybe 8' across which held
the hive part of the ovens and the open fireplace and, IIRC, some sort of
bench arrangement. Leaving aside the bench bit (oh dear, I'll just have to
go back and check...), why would there be a small, very hot room for the
open fire? What might it have been used for? The other was specifically
stated to have been the kitchen.
Most of the walls in the krak are about 3 feet thick, and the buildings are
very cool inside, but I still wouldn't want to be in that tiny room in
summer. Winter would be different. Maybe you could use it as a general
yeast-culture room in winter (i.e. beer as well as bread). There are
fireplaces or smokeholes in almost every social room in each krak we've
visited. This place gets cold in winter (well, not like Europe, but it
snows), but summer is a very different story (we're not even into summer
yet, and averaging 40 deg C at present).
Cairistiona
P.S. The castle also boasts a stone bath - huge - you could fit 2 in it
quite easily. Those crusaders...
P.P.S. Also some remains of a smithy. Not much, apart from a tempering
bath.
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