A Horno (an adobe oven) at Taos Pueblo in New Mexico in 2003

( ; ) is a mud

adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

-built outdoor

oven upA double oven A ceramic oven An oven is a tool which is used to expose materials to a hot environment. Ovens contain a hollow chamber and provide a means of heating the chamber in a controlled way. In use since antiquity, they have been us ...

used by Native Americans and early settlers of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. Originally introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors, it was quickly adopted and carried to all Spanish-occupied lands. The has a beehive shape and uses wood as the heat source. The procedure still used in parts of New Mexico and Arizona is to build a fire inside the and, when the proper amount of time has passed, remove the

embers ''Embers'' is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957. First broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959, the play won the RAI prize at the Prix Italia awards later that year. Donald McWhinnie directed Jack ...

and

ashes Ashes may refer to: *Ash, the solid remnants of fires. Media and entertainment Art * ''Ashes'' (Munch), an 1894 painting by Edvard Munch Film * ''The Ashes'' (film), a 1965 Polish film by director Andrzej Wajda * ''Ashes'' (1922 film), a ...

and insert the

bread Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made f ...

to be cooked. In the case of

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

, the embers are doused with water and the corn is then inserted into the to be steam-cooked. When cooking meats, the oven is fired to a "white hot" temperature (approximately ), the coals are moved to the back of the oven, and the meats placed inside. The smoke-hole and door are sealed with mud. A twenty-one-pound turkey will take 2 to 3 hours to cook. is the usual Spanish word for 'oven' or 'furnace', and derives from the Latin word . "Young women must master the art of using the oven to bake

piki Piki is a bread made from blue corn meal used in Hopi cuisine. Preparation Blue corn, a staple grain of the Hopi, is first reduced to a fine powder on a metate. It is then mixed with water and burnt ashes of native bushes or juniper trees for pur ...

, a tasty, delicate paper-thin bread made of cornmeal, before they are considered fit for marriage."

References

Earth oven Fireplaces Cooking appliances Barbecue Garden features * {{Kitchenware-stub

See also

References