An Oven and Two Urns in the Kitchen, 13kB [Next] [Prev] [Audio]

Kitchen

There were usually two kitchens in a mission. One was the kind of kitchen you are familiar with; it was used to cook food and bake bread. This kitchen was usually inside the main mission building. It had three parts to it: space for baking, space for grinding, and space for cooking. The baking part (which you see in the picture above) usually had two or more large clay ovens. To use the ovens, the women in the kitchen built a fire inside and let it burn until only the glowing coals were left. Then, they put the bread inside the oven (next to the coals) and sealed* the opening with a brick until the bread was done. But the bread was only a supplement to the main meals cooked at the mission. The other food was prepared in the rest of the kitchen.