In early California, people often raised the wheat, stored it, ground the wheat grains every day that they wanted to make bread, and baked the loaves in outdoor ovens. What a lot of work! During this current pandemic, everyone started cooking and baking. Making bread became so popular that I heard the bread-making appliances were in short supply! Years ago, I made bread so I decided to try to bake bread again. With very few places to go to these days, being indoors and waiting for the bread dough to rise was no problem. A really good rise (without a bread machine) can take seven hours! Many people leave the dough to rise overnight, which I imagine many early pioneers did. In Alta California and other Spanish colonies, the bread was baked in adobe clay beehive-shaped ovens, built outside the main dwelling to avoid house fires.
On the Brink of the World