Baking Bread In this fourteenth-century French manuscript, women bake bread in a large oven, using a long wooden paddle to insert the loaves, just as modern pizza bakers do. Medieval families cooked in pots and on spits over fires in their own homes, but rarely had ovens because of the danger of fire. Instead they bought their bread, just as they did beer or ale, another staple of the medieval diet. (The Granger Collection, New York — All rights reserved.)