Concise Bible Dictionary:
In Egypt the king had a man-servant who is called his “chief baker” (Gen. 40:1-22; Gen. 41:10); but in Israel the baking was done by the women of each house, as Abraham called to Sarah to prepare cakes upon the hearth (Gen. 18:6); and Samuel said that if the Israelites had a king he would take their daughters to be bakers (1 Sam. 8:13). In Jerusalem there was apparently a part devoted to the bakers, for Jeremiah was to have a piece of bread out of the Bakers’ street (or Bazaar, as it would now be expressed in the East) as long as the bread lasted (Jer. 37:21). In Hosea 7:4,6, the heating of the oven by the baker is used figuratively for those who, as it were, prepared their lusts for evil, and then waited till the moment when they could satisfy them more greedily. Alas, that it should be Israel of whom the prophet thus speaks.