Loaves of Bread found at Pompeii.
3. Baling. — The cakes were now taken to the oven ; having been first, according to the practice in Egypt, gathered into " white baskets" (Gen. xl, 16), Wn i|&, salley' chori' , a doubtful expression, referred by some to the whiteness of the bread (Sept. kuvo. xovdpirmv; Aquil. Ko(pii'oi yvpiuje. ; Vulg. canistra farinm), by others, as in the A. V., to the whiteness of the baskets, and again, by connecting the word "HH with the idea of a hole, to an open-work basket {margin, A. V.), or, lastly, to bread baked in a hole. The baskets were placed on a tray and carried on the baker's head (Gen. xl, 16; Herod, ii, 35; Wilkinson, ii, 386). See Bas- ket.
The baking was done in primitive times by the mis- tress of the house (Gen. xviii, G) or one of the daugh- ters (2 Sam. xiii, 8) ; female servants were, however, employed in large households (1 Sam. viii, 13): it ap- pears always to have been the proper business of women in a family (Jer. vii, 18; xliv, 19; Matt, xiii, 33; comp. Plin. xviii, 11, 28). Baking, as a profes- sion, was carried on by men (Hos. vii, 4, G). In Je- rusalem the bakers congregated in one quarter of the town, as we may infer from the name " bakers' street" (Jer. xxxvii, 21), and "tower of the ovens" (Neh. iii, 11; xii, 38); A. V. "furnaces." In the time of the Herods, bakers were scattered throughout the towns of Palestine (Joseph. Ant. xv, 9, 2). As the bread was made in thin cakes, which soon l>ecame dry and unpalatable, it was usual to bake daily, or when re- quired (Gen. xviii, 6 ; comp. Harmer's Observations, i, 483) : reference is perhaps made to this in the Lord's
BREAD
882
BREAD
prayer (Matt, vi, 11 ; Luke xi, 3). The bread taken by persons on a journey (Hen. xiv, 23; Josh, ix, 12) was probably a kind of biscuit. See Bake.
The methods of baking (flSX, aphak") were, and still are, very various in the East, adapted to the various styles of life. In the towns, where professional ba- kers resided, there were no doubt fixed ovens, in shape and size resembling those in use among ourselves; but nunc usually each household possessed a portable oven (""?, tannur'- ; icXijiai'oc), consisting of a stone or metal jar about three feet high, which was heated inwardly with wood (1 Kings xvii, 12; Isa. xliv, 15; Jer. vii, 18) or dried grass and flower-stalks (yoo7-oc, Matt, vi, 30) ; when the fire had burned down, the cakes were applied either inwardly (Herod, ii, 92) or outwardly: such ovens were used by the Egyptians (Wilkinson, ii, 385), and by the Easterns of Jerome's time (Comment, in Lam. v, Id), and are still common among the Bedouins (Wellsted's Travels, i, 350 ; Nie- buhr's Descript. ele VA rabie, p. 45, 46). The use of a single oven by several families only took place in time of famine (Lev. xxvi, 26). Another species of oven consisted of a hole dug in the ground, the sides of which were coated with clay and the bottom with pebbles (Harmer, i, 487). Jahn (Arckaol. i, 9, § 140) thinks that this oven is referred to in the term Q"}"3"*"?, hira >jim (Lev. xi, 35) ; but the dual number is an ob- jection to this view ; the term "l*"iFl above (Gen. xl, 16) has also been referred to it. See Oven.
Other modes of baking were specially adapted to the migratory habits of the pastoral Jews, as of the mod- ern Bedouins ; the cakes were either spread upon stones, which were previously heated by lighting a fire above them (Burckhardt's Notes, i, 58) or beneath them (Bclzoni's Travels, p. 84) ; or they were thrown into the heated embers of the fire itself (Wellsted's Travels, i, 350; Niebuhr, D. script, p. 46); or, lastly, they were roasted by being placed between layers of dung, which burns slowly, and is therefore specially adapted for the purpose (Ezra iv, 12, 15 ; Burckhardt's Notes, i, 57 ; Niebuhr's Descript. p. 46). The terms by which such cakes were described were !"!;•". uggah' (Gen. xviii, 6; Exod. xii, 89; 1 Kings xvii, 13; Ezra iv, 12; IIos. vii, 8), 51"*;, maog' (1 Kings xvii, 12; Psa. xxxv, 16), or more fully t3""B3"*l MS, uggath' retsaphim' (1 Kings xix, 6, lit. on the stones, "coals," A. V.), the term firO referring, however, not to the mode of baking, but to the rounded shape of the cake (Gesen. Thesaur. p. 997) : the equivalent terms in the Sept. iyKiwtyiac, and in the Vulg. subcinericius poods, have direct reference to the peculiar mode of baking. The cakes required to be carefully turned during the process (IIos. vii, 8; Harmer, i, 488). Other meth- ods were used for other kinds of bread; some were baked on a pan ("H" ; rf/yavov ; sartago: the Greek term survives in the lajen of the Bedouins), the result being similar to the k/iubz still used among the latter people (Burckhardt's Notes, i, 58), or like the Greek rayi'irua, which were baked in oil, and eaten warm with honey (Athen. xiv, 55, p. 646); such cakes ap- peared to have been chiefly used as sacred offerings (Lev. ii, 5; vi.ll; vii, 9; 1 Chron. xxiii, 29). A sim- ilar cooking utensil was used by Tamar (2 Sam. xiii, 9, rVjtt)73; Ttiyavov), in which she baked the cakes and then emptied them out in a heap (p"!"1, not " poured," as if it had been broth) before Amnion. A different kind of bread, probably resembling the ftita of the Bedouins, a patty substance ( Burckhardt's Notes, i, 57), was prepared in a Baucepan (r"in~"c ; ttryapa ; crati- cuta; A. 7. frying-pan; none of which meanings, how- ever, correspond with the etymological sense of the word, which is connected with boiling"); this was also reserved for sacred offerings (Lev. ii, 7 ; vii, 9). As