Baking bread and drying cherries

"Well anyway, there after the diskbänk, sometimes we had a table there at the window to the west. Other times, I remember the table at the north window. And in the corner was a corner cupboard where all the dishes that Mother had were. Then there was a door into the next room which was called Salen.

The Kitchen Crew --
Elin is sitting. Mom stands in the middle in front. In the
back row, Mom's sisters Brita is to the left and
Margaretha is right behind mom. I'm not sure who
the girl to the right is. It would make sense it's Sara,
but it doesn't quite look like her.  Any thoughts? 

On the other side of the door, in the southeast corner of the kitchen, there was the stove part of the kitchen. First, there was a great big oven of bricks. This oven was for baking or drying and they didn’t bake so often. They didn’t bake every week because it was a big job. They had a special wood that was called oven wood. It was about three feet long. It was laid in a special way in there, and they had to be of a special kind of wood so there wouldn’t be any smell or taste from the wood left in the bread. They burnt that wood in the big oven. When it was burning down, they’d rake it up so it would all burn away. They knew just how much wood to put in to get the wood just so hot. When it was going down to coals, they’d quickly rake the coals out into a bucket that stood next to the oven door. Then they had a special brush. They made a new one every time I think. It had a special handle. On top, there were metal bands where they could stick in boughs of pine trees. They dipped that in water -- it made a brush -- and swept the oven, so all the ashes came out.  They had to do this very quickly so the door could get shut again.

When all of this was removed, then the bread had to be ready to go right in. First they baked coffee bread and then they baked rye bread or wheat for regular meals. Sometimes they’d bake cookies after that. Sometimes they had the oven fired up just for cookie baking. Then they had to bake the cookies that needed the hottest temperatures first. It was quite a science with this bake oven. Then at the end, they made dried bread. There was a special dough for skorpor. What we might call rusks. It didn’t have so much fat or sugar in it as sweet breads. They would put that in the oven and would sit there and dry.

The cherry trees at Kjettestorp and Morbror Lennart in 2002.

In the fall when we had fruit, they would cut apples or cherries; we dried a lot of cherries. Dad had made a special frame with chicken wire. They spread the cut fruit out and that would go into the oven to soak up the last heat as it cooled down. On the side there in between this oven and the cast iron stove, there was an iron rod that held up a – we called it kuppa -- a hood that went over both the big oven and the stove. This thing it had two hooks from that bar, and it was called the fästman, the boyfriend. At Christmas, we always put tissue paper around it that we made fringes in, and we said we were dressing the fästman. On those hooks, hung the potholders.

Elin Boberg spinning in the kitchen at Kjettestorp. This is the only photo that I have that
shows the kitchen in this era. You can see what Mom calls the iron stove behind
the spinning wheel.

Then we come to the iron stove. It was a cast iron stove fired with wood. It had a small oven that casseroles and such could go in, but it wasn’t more than half the size of the ovens we have now. On the left side of this stove, there was a copper thing; well, we called it cistern. It was made of copper and had a little lid in front where they could pour in more cold water, and it had a faucet down below. That’s how we had hot water. Then on the side there, there was a door into the master bedroom, mom and dad’s bedroom. Then on the east side, there was a wood sofa with a wood lid. You might call it a daybed. There was a cushion on top so somebody could sleep there. Sometimes when we were sick, they would get us from our regular bed and we would lay in the kitchen, and we could sleep on that bed. On the north side there was a window. If the table wasn’t there, there would be a sitting bench. Next to that was a big wood tub that held the water. There was a metal scoop hanging on the side, so they could scoop up water when they needed it. That was sitting up high on four legs with four pieces of wood in between. That was the kitchen."