- Russian oven
Russian oven ( _ru. Русская печь) is a unique type of
oven /furnace , invented inAncient Rus and used for both cooking and house heating. http://www.besthome.ru/arrange/info/heating/heating_273.html ] Г. Я. Федотов. Русская печь — Эксмо. — 2007. — ISBN 978-5-699-23171-3] TheRussia n oven burnsfirewood or wood manufacturing waste.http://pechka.su/]Various types of firewood can be used, for example birch or pine. Aspen is least efficient to heat a Russian oven because the amount of Aspen needed is twice as much compared to other woods.
Construction
Russian oven is designed to keep the heat for long periods of time. [http://mildhouse.ru/pechi_russkaya_pech/obschie_svedeniya/] This is achieved by a complex labyrinth of passages through which the smoke goes, warming up the bricks that make up the oven.
"Hog" has an obligatory presence (made from bricks in an attic, sometimes it has a chamber for smoking), in order to slow down the cooling of the oven.
Uses except warming up the location
It can be used for washing. A grown up man can easily enter it, and during the great patriotic war some people were saved from the Nazis by hiding in it. http://www.glenrich.ru/159/ ] http://ethnomir.ru/muzei_pech.html] By means of a warming up of a body inside of the furnace, in
Ancient Rus it was used to cure winter-diseases.The oven is also good for sleeping on it, esspecialy at winter times.http://muhtolovo.nne.ru/miracle_rus_pech.html] [http://www.moncton.net/forum/112778/ShowThread.aspx] This oven is also for cooking, for example, to bake pancakes or pies. The porridge or the pancakes prepared in such an oven, differ by taste from the same meal prepared on a modern plate warming. Process of cooking in the Russian furnace can be named "languor" - long time keeping a permanent temperature field. That’s why some dishes Simply wont get the same taste in other conditions (like baked milk,
pearl barley , mushrooms cocked in sour cream, or even a simple potato. Bread is put in and taken out from the oven using a special wooden shovel on a long shank.Cast iron pots with soup or milk are taken out with a huge metalSlingshot .Design
The Russian oven is usually in the centre of the log hut (
izba ). The builders of Russian ovens are referred to as the stovemakers (pechniki). Good stovemakers always had a high status among the population. A badly combined Russian oven is very difficult for repairing, bad to bake smokes and badly stores heat (that demands the overexpenditure of fire wood). [http://www.mukhin.ru/stroysovet/stove&heaters/5_5.html] [http://bibliotekar.ru/spravochnik-6/79.htm]There are many designers for the Russian oven. For example there is a variant with two centers (one of the centers is used mainly for the fast cooking, the second - mainly for heating during winter time). [http://www.mukhin.ru/stroysovet/stove&heaters/5_5.html]
The Russian oven in Russian popular culture
The Russian Oven was the major element of Russian life and consequently it often appeared in the folklore, and in particular in national fairy tales.
Ilya Muromets has lead on the Russian Oven 33 years of the life. Yemela, according to the legend, didn’t want to leave it so much that he simply flew and rode on it. [http://cqham.qrz.ru/skazka/skaz028.shtml]Baba Yaga according to the legend baked children that got lost in that oven. Often in those fairytale the oven received human characteristics. For example in the tale "Geese-swans" a girl meets a Russian Oven, and asks her the direction. The oven suggests it to try pies, and subsequently, on a return way, hides the girl from a pursuit. [Золотая книга сказок Г. Н. Губанова. — Тула: ООО «Родничок». 2001. — С.241. — ISBN 5-89624-013-9] [ Гуси-лебеди. — Донецк: Проф-пресс. — 1999. — ISBN 5-88475-298-X]References
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