Solar breads from Croatia

This is a wooden "peel" or spatula (called "lopar" in local Croatian dialect). 

This tool is used for manipulating bread loaves inside bread ovens. 

Lopars can also have shorter handles, like these ones:

They were used for shaping bread dough and placing it on the hot baking (cooking) floor heated by charcoal. So the handle didn't need to be long. The bread was then covered with a metal or ceramic lid and the charcoal was piled on top. 

Here is baked bread being taken from under the lid.

Now here is something very interesting. These are short handle lopars from island Pag, Croatia, which are dated to the 19 century. 

They have very interesting decorations, don't you think? Here is the close up of one of these lopars:

These particular type of lopars was used in this way: the dough would be placed on the pattern side, and pressed down using the palm of one's hand to impress the pattern on the surface of the bread. Then the dough would be left to prove (rise) on the board. Once the was risen, it would be flipped over onto the hot hearth floor. The bread would then, as I already said, be covered with a metal or ceramic lid and the charcoal was piled on top. 

And here is the final product. This picture is from Bosnia and was taken in 1970:

The you see the pattern in the middle? Interesting don't you think?