The bread oven is not merely a bread oven.

This may seem a strange opening remark for a work entitled The Bread Ovens of Quebec, but we wish to stress that these ovens are used not only for baking bread, but for other culinary and domestic purposes as well. f Furthermore, a s a material product o a particular culture, the bread oven is also related to the economic, social, linguistic, psychological, religious, and other cultural subsystems.* Our study seeks to demonstrate the usefulness o combining f research on the material culture with other elements making up the cultural whole. Far from being simply an object, the bread oven reflects a f technique, a physical environment, a standard o living, a spatial organization, indeed a whole a way o life. It reveals a great deal about the f f perceptual and conceptual schemes o the people using it. The oven may therefore be considered a total cultural fact. The study o the bread oven also relates to the increasingly f f f widespread concept o foodways. This concept o foodways refers to f the whole interrelated system o food conceptualization and evaluation, procurement, distribution, preservation, preparation, consumption, and nutrition shared by all the members o a particular society.] Our f f f treatment o the bread oven as part o the overall culture naturally includes this concept. A rigorous system o research enabled us to gather considerable f documentation from various archival collections and numerous informants, especially in rural Quebec. The most informative people were from the Saguenay-Lac-SaintJean region, Charlevoix, Montmorency, Beauce, LotbiniGre, and the south shore o the St. Lawrence River as far as the tip f o the Gasp6 Peninsula. f Our research was conducted in three main phases: a study o the f f literature, research o archival documents, and fieldwork. The first phase uncovered only a very small amount o f information. There is, in fact, very little material on bread ovens in studies that have appeared thus far. There are, however, some general works on French-Canadian folk culture that deal with the subject briefly. We will f mention just a few o these. f Among the most recent studies, we should mention those o Robert-Lionel Skguin, who notes the presence o the oven in the f
*The reader may wish t o consult the works of James Deetz, Lewis Binford, and David Clarke, which discuss the link between the cultural subsystems and the importance of considering material culture within its overall context.

settlements at various periods in the history o French Canada. Skguin f makes some general remarks in his works based mainly upon notarial records.2 O n a lighter note, Fklix-Antoine Savard includes in one o his f works a charming description o Alexis, a tireless builder of clay ovens. In f a delightful allegory, the author gives us a detailed and highly informative f f description o the phases o construction.3 We should also mention the very useful writings o Georges f Bouchard, a professor at the School o Agriculture in Sainte-Anne-de-laf PocatiGre at the beginning o the twentieth century. He offers those f interested in agronomy, and the layman as well, some very valuable advice on the small-scale production o clay ovens.4 f Our curiosity even led us to consult French literature on the subject, in an attempt to compare the methods used by French-Canadian habitants with those used by the peasants of France. In sodoing, we were fortunate to come across the very first encyclopaedia by Diderot and dAlembert.5 This scientific work, which seeks to understand and depict an object a s it truly is and to show its origin, tells o a procedure for f constructing a bread oven at very little cost.6The method described is still used today by some Quebec farmers. Finally, we should point out that we eliminated all possibility o the f f existence o seigneurial ovens by consulting authors who clearly state that this seigneurial right was never exercised in New F r a n ~ eThis is not to .~ say, however, that the seigneurs did not have their own ovens to meet the f needs o the manor. The second stage o our research involved the examination o f f some notarial records o the French Regime.8 In studying these f documents we noted that bread ovens were mentioned only occasionally.9 When they are referred to, the date shown is for the day they f were spotted and does not always indicate the date o construction. Consequently, an oven could well have existed for a hundred years but only appear in the records for the first time when it was already obsolete. Moreover, the records do not necessarily include all those who used the ovens. The contracts reveal that, in the city, workmen-often masonswere sometimes hired to construct or rebuild a bread oven. This was not the case in the country, however, where the assistance o a neighbour or f other local inhabitant with the necessary skill could be obtained. In such circumstances, the services rendered would be compensated for in food or lodging, and a visit to the notary would thus not be necessary. Nor would there be any written record when an individual built his own oven. If rural people were capable o putting up their buildings themselves or with f f the help o nearby neighbours, they certainly would have been able to make their own ovens as well. In view o the above, the archives do not tell the whole story o the f f ovens, and, consequently, the facts we gleaned from them should be interpreted carefully. f The third and not the least important phase consisted o careful f fieldwork. We cannot overemphasize the importance o the valuable

information given to us by our two hundred informants, which enabled us to reach certain general conclusions valid for all the regions visited. Furthermore, our fieldwork enabled us to consider the bread oven within f the overall context o rural life. During our visits, we were able to see a full f f range o oven sites and to assess the significance of the location o the ovens in relation to household activities as a whole. Our work in the field also gave us a better understanding of the construction techniques used, and enabled those interviewed to express themselves freely and naturally in their own colourful way. Our informants were questioned in a very objective manner. We asked only neutral questions, in an attempt to respect the scientific f methodology of ethnography. According to the precepts o ethnography, it is important for the researcher to stay in the background in any interview with an informant. The informant can then express freely, in his own words, what he knows and has experienced. The interviewer is always careful to avoid any leading questions that might alter the original f thought o the informant. Throughout our investigation, we judged an interview a success if our informant was appalled at our ignorance and decided to set us straight right away. It was in this way that peoples perceptions of the bread oven were transmitted to us, and they did this in the terms peculiar to rural Quebec. In the first chapter, we analyse the information collected on the ovens and the people who built them. In the second chapter, we present a technical study o the building of a clay oven in the Saguenay region to f familiarize the reader with the construction of ovens o this type. You will f note that the technique used is the same as the one described by Diderot in his Encyclopddie, which was first published between 1751and 1765.We then move on to the chapter on bread making, where we present the f f information required for a proper evaluation o this source o nutrition. And, finally, we cover the oral tradition relating to the bread oven and everything connected with it. On the whole, the picture of the bread oven that we present is basically a historical reconstruction and does not depict the situation that exists in rural Quebec today. We do feel that it is valid for the turn o the f f century, however, since the average age o our informants was seventy.

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

Outdoor clay oven Saint-Francois concession, Saint-Urbain (Charlevoix county) Blanchette Collection, CCFCS Archiws,* no. 113 *CCFCS: Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies, National Museum o f Man, Ottawa

Semi-indoor oven forming part of a detached building Concession 5, Saint-Hilarion(Charlevoix county) Blonchette Collection, CCFCS Archives, no. 104