Ovens historically have been made by either digging the heating chamber into the earth, or by building them from various materials:
Earth ovens, dug into the earth and covered with non-permanent means, like leaves and soil
Masonry ovens, a term historically used for "built-up ovens", usually made of clay, adobe and cob, stone, and brick.
Modern ovens are made of industrial materials.
Earth ovens
An earth oven, or cooking pit, is one of the most simple and long-used cooking structures. At its simplest, an earth oven is a pit in the ground used to trap heat and bake, smoke, or steam food. Earth ovens have been used in many places and cultures in the past, and the presence of such cooking pits is a key sign of human settlement often sought by archaeologists. They remain a common tool for cooking large quantities of food where no equipment is available.
See below under "Baking ovens", both for masonry oven in general and for various types.
Purpose
Broadly speaking, ovens have always been used either for cooking, prominently for baking; or for industrial purposes – for producing metals out of ores, charcoal, coke, ceramic, etc.
Baking is a food cooking method that uses prolonged dry heat by convection, rather than by thermal radiation, normally in an oven, but also in hot ashes, or on hot stones.[2] Bread is a commonly baked food.
Baking bread in a commercial ovenBread being baked in a tabun oven
A heat storage oven and cooker, which works on the principle that a heavy frame made from cast iron components can absorb heat from a relatively low-intensity but continuously-burning source, and the accumulated heat can then be used when needed for cooking.
An electric table or cabinet top popular in the 1950s. Large enough to bake turkeys, they had removable inserts which held the food and a lid, often with a glass insert.
Industrial ovens are heated chambers used for a variety of industrial applications, including drying, curing, or baking components, parts or final products. Industrial ovens can be used for large or small volume applications, in batches or continuously with a conveyor line, and a variety of temperature ranges, sizes and configurations.
A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Various industries and trades use kilns to harden objects made from clay into pottery, bricks etc.[3] Various industries use rotary kilns for pyroprocessing—to calcinate ores, produce cement, lime, and many other materials.
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