Ancient Israelite cuisine aside, and the loaves were baked on the heated surface. People also began placing a convex dome, initially earthenware and later metal, over the pit-oven and cooking the flatbreads on the dome instead of on the ash-covered surface; this type of oven is probably what was meant by the biblical "machabat", often translated as “griddle”. The Persians introduced a clay oven called a tanur (similar to the Indian tandoor), which had an opening at the bottom for the fire, and through which the bread was placed to be baked on the inner wall of the upper chamber from the heat
Masonry oven pizza. In the same way that masonry oven cooking techniques haven’t changed much over the millennia, neither have construction practices. Whether built with mud, brick, or modern refractories, any oven is basically a masonry shell, a smaller version of structures such as the Roman Pantheon, Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence, or Houston’s Astrodome. Early ovens were simply clay soil (usually tempered with sand to reduce cracking, as in brick-making) built up over a form of sticks or sand. When the clay was stiff enough to cut open a doorway, you dug out the sand, or burned out the wood. Smoke is