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The bread oven is not merely a bread oven.Th is may seem a strang e opening rem ark for a work entitled The B r e a dO v e n s of Quebec, but we wish to stre ss that these ov ens are used not onlyfor baking bread, but for othe r culinary an d domestic purp oses a s well.Furthermore, a s a material product of a particular culture, the bread ovenis also related to t he e cono mic, social, linguistic, psychological, religious,and othe r cultural subsystems.*Our s tudy seeks to demonstra te the usefulness of combiningresearch on the material culture with other elements making up thecultural whole. Fa r from being simply an object, the b read o ven reflects atechnique, a physical environment, a standard of living, a spatialorganization, indeed a whole a way of life. It reveals a great deal abo ut th eperceptual and conceptual schem es of the people using it. Th e oven m aytherefore be considered a total cultural fact.The s tudy of the bread oven also relates to the increasinglywidespread concept of foodways. This con cep t of foodways refers tothe whole interrelated system of food conceptualization an d evaluation,procurement, distribution, preservation, preparation, consumption, andnutrition shared by all the members of a particular society.] Ourtreatment of the bread oven as par t of the overall culture naturallyincludes this concept.A rigorous system of research enabled us to gather considerabledocumentation from various archival collections and numerous infor-ma nts, especially in rural Quebec. Th e most informative people were fromthe Saguenay-Lac-SaintJean region, Charlevoix, Montmorency, Beauce,LotbiniGre, and the sou th sh ore of the S t. Lawrence River as far as th e tipof the Gas p6 Peninsula.O ur research w as conducted in three main phases: a study of theliterature, research of archival documents, and fieldwork.The first phase uncovered only a very small amount ofinformation. T he re is, in fact, very little material on bre ad o ven s in stud iesthat have a ppeared th us far. There a re, however, som e general works onFren ch-C ana dian folk culture th at deal with th e subject briefly. W e willmention just a few of these .

Among the most recent studies, we should mention those ofRobert-Lionel Skguin, who notes the presence of the oven in the*The re ader may wish to consult the works of Jam es Deetz, LewisBinford, and David C larke,which discuss the link between the cultural subsystems and th e importance of consideringmaterial culture within its overall context.

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settlements at various periods in the history of French Cana da. Skguinmakes some general remarks in his works based mainly upon notarialrecords.2O n a lighter note, Fklix-Antoine Sav ard includes in o ne of hiswork s a charming description of Alexis, a tireless builder of clay oven s. Ina d elightful allegory, th e a ut ho r gives us a detailed a nd highly informativedescription of the phases of construction.3W e should also me ntion th e very useful writings of GeorgesBouchard, a professor a t the School of Agriculture in Sainte-Ann e-de-la-PocatiGre at the beginning of the twentieth century. He offers thoseinte reste d in agron omy, an d the layman as well, so m e very valuable adviceon the small-scale production of clay ovens.4Our curiosity even led us to consult French literature on thesubject , in an a t tempt to com pare the m ethods used by French-Canadianhabitants with those used by the peasan ts of France. In sodoing, we werefortunate to come across the very first encyclopaedia by Diderot anddAlembert.5 This scientific work, which see ks t o un der stan d and depictan object as it truly is and to show its origin, tells of a procedure forconstructing a brea d oven a t very little cost.6The m etho d described is stillused today by som e Queb ec farmers.Finally, we s hou ld point ou t tha t we eliminated all possibility of th eexis tence of seigneurial ov ens by consulting auth ors who clearly stat e thatthis seigneurial right was never exercised in New F r a n ~ e . ~hi s is not tosay, however, that th e seigneurs did not have their own ovens to meet then e e d s of the m anor.The second s tage of our research involved the examination ofsome notarial records of the French Regime.8 In studying thesedocuments we noted that bread ovens were mentioned only occa-sionally.9 When they are referred to, the date shown is for the day theywere spotted and does not always indicate the date of construction.Con seque ntly, an oven could well have existed for a hundred years butonly ap pe ar in th e rec ord s for the first time when it was already obsolete.Moreover, th e reco rds d o not necessarily include all those who used theove ns. Th e co ntr ac ts reveal that, in the city, workmen-often masons-we re sometimes hired to constru ct or rebuild a bread oven. This was notth e case in t he coun try, however, where the assistance of a neighbour oro t h e r local inhabitant with th e necessary skill could be obtained. In su chcircum stances , the services rendered would be com pensa ted for in foodor lodging, and a visit t o the notary would thu s not be necessary. N orwould ther e b e any written rec ord w hen a n individual built his own oven. Ifrural people were capable of putting up their buildings themselves or withthe help of nearby neighbours, they certainly would have been able toma ke their own ov ens a s well.In view of the abov e, the archives do not tell the whole story of theovens, and, consequently, the facts we gleaned from them should beinter pre ted carefully.Th e third an d not the least important phase consisted of carefulfieldwork. We cannot overemphasize the importance of the valuable

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information given to us by ou r two hu ndre d informants, which enabled usto reach certain general conclusions valid for all the regions visited.Fur ther mo re, ou r fieldwork enabled us to consider th e bread oven withinth e overall con text of rural life. During our visits, we were able to see a fullrange of oven sites and to asses s the significance of the location of theove ns in relation to household activities a s a whole. O u r work in th e fieldalso gave us a bette r understanding of th e construction techniques used,an d enabled t ho se interviewed to exp res s themselves freely an d naturallyin their own colourful way.O ur informants were questioned in a very objective ma nne r. W easked only neutral questions, in an attempt to respect the scientificmethodology ofethnography. According to the pr ecep ts of ethnography,it is important for the researcher to stay in the background in anyinterview with an informant. Th e informant ca n the n e xp res s freely, in hisown words, what he knows and has experienced. The interviewer isalways careful t o avoid any leading questions tha t might alter the originalthought of the informant. Throughout our investigation, we judged aninterview a success if ou r informant was appalled at our ignorance anddecided to set us straight right away. It was in this way that peoplespercept ionsof the brea d oven were transmitted to us, a nd they did this inthe term s peculiar to rural Quebec.In the first cha pter, we analyse the information collected o n theoven s and t he people who built them. In the seco nd chapter, we present atechnical study of th e building of a clay oven in the Sag uen ay region tofamiliarize the read er with the construction of ovens of this typ e. Y ou willnote that th e technique used is the sam e as the one descr ibed by Diderotin his Encyclopddie, w hich wa s first published betwee n 1751and 1765.W ethen move on to the chapter on bread making, where we present theinformation required for a proper evaluation of this sour ce of nutrition.And, finally, we cov er th e oral tradition relating to th e bre ad oven a ndeverything co nne cted with it.O n th e whole, the picture of the b read oven tha t we present isbasically a historical reconstruction an d do es not depict th e situation thatexists in rural Q uebec today. W e do feel that it is valid for the turn of thecentury, however, since the average age of our informants was seventy.

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Baking day-a nostalgic picture of rurallifeNotman Collection,Public Archives of Canada,no . c-20615

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Outdoor clay ovenSaint-Francois concession, Saint-Urbain(Charlevoix county)Blanchette Collection, CCF CS Ar-chiw s ,* no. 113*CC FCS : Canadian Centre for FolkCulture St udies, National Museum of7 Man, Ottawa

Semi-indoor oven forming part of adetached buildingConcession 5, Saint-Hilarion (Charlevoixcounty)Blonchette Collection, CCFC S Ar-chives, no . 104