The village baker’s oven

 In TasteHistory

A Sunday roast cooked in your own oven at home somehow doesn’t taste as good as when you take it to the village baker to cook it for you in his wood-burning oven. This old tradition remains with us to this day, albeit not as widely as in times when people did not have the luxury of the kitchen appliances we enjoy nowadays. Here’s an old saying related to this, taken from the book Lis Storia ta Malta bil Gzejer Tahha which Pietro Paolo Castagna published in 1888:

Meta ir ragel icun imsiefer, il mara xein ma tibghad il forn; ghax il girien johorgiuh fil gharucasa!

When her husband is abroad, a woman sends no food to the baker, for fear of setting neighbours’ tongues wagging.

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