The oldest bread recipes involve using unleavened dough and baking on hot coal. Later people started building bread ovens at the edge of their property and after some time bread oven was moved to living quarters. Only Samogitians used to bake bread in a separate building, referred to as ubladė.
Wedding pies used to be baked since the pagan times. For a long time these were simple pies, but later bakers introduced the ritual wedding bread — karvojus — and tree cakes — šakotis.
Karvojus used to be backed by keeping to a special ritual. Meanwhile, its decorations symbolised the fairness of the bride, wishes for wealth, fertility and happiness. Baking involved all kinds of charms. Bakers used to add vodka to the dough to make the life of the newly-weds happy, light five candles on the bread oven to make their life light, etc.
Lithuanians began baking šakotis tree cake back in the late 9th c. It used to baked in front of the bread oven on a wooden, slightly tapered roller, wrapped in a string and linen cloth. The ends of the roller used to be covered in rye dough in order to prevent the cloth from burning. The roller used to be put on two stands, warmed and richly smeared with melted butter. Then the beaker would pour the dough on the roller using a wooden spoon, constantly turning the roller. Before adding other layers, the first layer had to be well-baked. The process was much easier for two people. One of them would keep slowly turning the roller and the other would pour the dough and tend the fire. A freshly-baked tree cake would stay on the stands for a while, then be removed and cooled down. The next day the baker would remove the rye dough and the string, take the tree cake off the roller together with the cloth and then carefully remove the cloth. The shelf life of a tree cake used to be quite long.
Later bakers began producing simpler traditional treats: pie mushrooms, squirrels, nuts, strawberries, cones, bunnies and cocks. Christmas Eve could not be imagined without the small, mild and slightly sweet leavened dough pastries with poppy seeds — Kūčiukai.