While there are innumerous gods and goddesses within the mythologies of different cultures that are dedicated to the tending of the hearth, Hestia, the Greek Goddess of the home and the hearth is by far, the most known. She was the first born of the six Olympians and swallowed by their father, Cronus, upon her birth.

Hestia was worshipped daily. All newborns were carried around the hearth to be welcomed into the family. The hearth was taken care of by a female family member who was a virgin. Before each meal, it was normal for families to throw something on the hearth as an offering. She was the keeper and protector of private things; therefore, she received many prayers as well as sacrifices. Each meal began and ended with an offering to Hestia. Liquid was poured as a religious offering before sacrifices to honor her. There was a public hearth in every city dedicated to her, and this is where everyone came to get the fire for their hearths. Even as new cities were built, the new public hearth would be lit from another city's hearth.

Her temples were circular and served by virgin priestesses who dedicated their lives to her. Each city also had a public hearth sacred to Hestia, where the fire was never allowed to go out. Many triangular or leaf-shaped ladles in stone or clay have been discovered in Cretan and Mycenaean shrines - these seem to have been used for tending the sacred fire. As goddess of the hearth, she never left the 'lofty adobe of the eternal gods' (from Theogony) and never intervened in the stormy history of the gods. Alone among the great Olympians, she never took part in wars or disputes. She was the central point, a calm within the chaos, a meeting place where people could flee for her protection.

Little is known of Fornax except that she was the goddess of bread baking. There are equivalents of her known in Greek mythology (name unknown) as well as Mesopotamian mythology.

The first breads and baked goods would have been cooked on flat stones heated directly in the fire. The backstone remained the preferred method of cooking flat or unleavened breads in many cultures, from Mexico to Scotland, and is still in use. However, a natural step to take was to cover the bakestone with an inverted pot to contain the heat, and then to turn this makeshift arrangement into a domed, igloo-shaped or beehive, oven. A free-standing structure of this sort, with its own source of meat, merely replicates on a larger scale the principle of the stone and pot. early examples have been found in Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Balkans.

The conventional account of the development of these ovens has then first appearing in Egypt. However, archaeologists working in the Balkans have unearthed models of near-conical (igloo-shaped) clay bread ovens dating from the middle of the 5th millennium BC and a site in Bulgaria has yielded a clay model of a loaf carbon dated to c. 5100 BC. The pattern of finds would indicate that these ovens were not known south of Macdeonia in Crete, for instance, there are none dating from before c. 1500 BC and the loaf model is of leavened bread, not an unleavened disc. These facts hint at the possibility that bread was first developed in C. Asia and came to the Mediteranean by both a southern (Mesopotamian and Egyptian) and a northern (Balkan) route.

The beehive oven is heated by burning a fire on its floor. When the fire has heated the structure, it is raked out and the risen dough put in its place. The doorway is sealed and the bread cooks in a falling heat radiating from every surface, the oven space capturing and recycling any moisture that evaporates from the loaves.

The technical development of ovens did not quicken pace until the 18th century when improvements in design allowed the more efficient retention, or even introduction, of moisture - hence the crackling thin crusts of Viennese and eventually Parisian loaves - and led to methods of remote heating rather than burning fuel on the oven sole. This faciliated more continuous production, as the oven did not have to be prepared an cleaned between each firing and permitted ovens of greater size: more usually with a flat arched roof than a dome.

During the 19th century, there were many experiments in conveying heat, just as other materials than brick, clay or stone, particularly steel, were tried for the oven's construction. Superheated steam, pipes filled with oil, oil burners, gas jets and latterly, electricity replaced wood and coal (Davidson 1999:96)