O forno

The baking oven. This is an enormous oven (it bakes more than 30 loaves and a large empanada – meat pie all in one batch). The oven is of granite, dome-shaped but has no chimney and to protect the thatched roof, above the opening, there is a bell-shaped slab of stone, which catches sparks from the oven where they die out and in this way the thatch roof is protected from the fire.

The problem with the oven is that it consumed more than a cart-full of wood, so it was lit only once every month to bake bread (rye bread which keeps a long time in the right conditions but when it got a little musty, you just scaped off a layer of mould and ate the rest underneath). To heat up the oven, wood was placed inside and the fire was built up till the stone turned white; then the ashes were taken out, the inside was swept out with a broom. A pile of hot ashes was left at the opening forming a barrier to keep the inside hot, so no door was needed. (It is said that originally there was a wooden door sealed up with cow-dung!)