The Oven

Many kitchen appliances are great inventions of the past two centuries, however I don't know how I can manage without the oven. I think the invention of the oven is significant because before the oven, meals took hours to prepare on the stove or outside in wood or coal burning ovens with laborious efforts. Having an oven to cook indoors has revolutionized the way we cook food today. In the past, cooking ovens were fueled by wood or coal and it hours to get the oven ready for cooking and then hours for the food to actually cook. Today thanks to the modern oven and it's technology, I can make a cake in 30 minutes, a turkey dinner in 3 hours, and heat up bread in minutes. There is no need to clean it, as the self-clean function takes care of the cleaning fast and efficiently. I can put dinner in the oven to cook while I do other chores around the house and a timer tells me when dinner is ready. How conveniently great is that?!!

History 

Settlements across the Indus Valley Civilization were the first to have an oven within each mud-brick house by 3200 BC. Culinary historians credit the Greeks for developing bread baking into an art. Front-loaded bread ovens were developed in ancient Greece. The Greeks created a wide variety of doughs, loaf shapes and styles of serving bread with other foods. Baking developed as a trade and profession as bread increasingly was prepared outside of the family home by specially trained workers to be sold to the public. This is one of the oldest forms of professional food processing. the Greeks also pioneered sweet breads, fritters, puddings, cheesecakes, pastries, and even wedding cakes. Often prepared in symbolic shapes, these products were originally served during special occasions and ceremonies. By 300 AD the Greeks had developed over seventy different kinds of bread.

Oven depicted in a painting by Millet

Ancient Greek portable oven

 

Traditional Moroccan clay oven

 

Classical Pompeii oven

 

 

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oven

Chronology

 

From: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blstoves.htm

• Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) invented the iron furnace stove or 'Franklin Stove'.
• Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist designed the first sootless kerosene stove.
• Jordan Mott invented the first practical coal stove in 1833. Mott's stove was called the baseburner. The stove had ventilation to burn the coal efficiently.
• British inventor, James Sharp patented a gas stove in 1826, the first successful gas stove to appear on the market.

The Carpenter Electric Heating Manufacturing Co. invented an electric stove in 1891. On June 30, 1896, William Hadaway was issued the first patent for the electric stove. In 1910, William Hadaway went on to design the first toaster made by Westinghouse, a horizontal combination toaster-cooker.

 

Second Industrial Revolution Stoves

The coal stove was cylindrical and made of heavy cast iron with a hole in the top, which was then enclosed by an iron ring. Gas stoves were found in most households by the 1920s with top burners and interior ovens. It was not until the late 1920s and early 1930s that electric stoves began to compete with gas stoves, however, electric stoves were available as early as the 1890s.