Baeckeoffe

The baeckeoffe is a traditional dish Alsatian, whose preparation is spread out over more than 24 hours.

History

The word baeckeoffe (which one writes also baeckeofe) meaning “furnace of the baker”, it should be understood that it was a dish of the city, a dish of Sunday. In the countryside the bakers were rare because, in general, each peasant made cook his bread, once every fifteen days or every three weeks (what gave the opportunity to prepare the Tarte flambe). And then such a quantity of meat would have cost too expensive the poorest people; the days of week these ate potatoes with thin soft white cheese (the bibeleskaas ) and Sunday, day of luxury, with eggs with white sauce (the kachelmües ).

Some ensure that it was in the beginning only of Strasbourg; in any case, in Limes of Lautenbach , Jean Egen tells us that, when it was necessary to prepare the meal which was to follow the burial of his/her grandmother, one had hesitated before choosing a baeckeoffe because it was a dish of the the Low-Rhine.

Saturdays, therefore, with Strasbourg or elsewhere in the families a little with their ease, the housewife prepared the baeckeoffe . One let macerate then, before leaving for the church, one deposited the pot in the baker so that it made it cook in his furnace after the cooking of his breads whereas the furnace cooled. That could last up to three hours, but time ago because the ceremonies were longer than now and one did not dispatch like today a mass in two blows of oil-cans.

An oral tradition of Strasbourg claims, it, that at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was often a dish of Monday. Monday being traditionally day of detergent, the family cooker was occupied by the boiler or boiled the linen, and one resorted then to the furnace of the baker. The children were charged to carry the dish to the baker and to bring back it while returning from the school. (Source: family memories).

See too

regional Speciality (French kitchen)

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Baeckeoffe

History

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