Introduction
The bread is a staple of Morroccon diet and also their culture. The Berber community of Morocco bakes their bread everyday. It is an integral part of their hospitality offering, one of the first meals served to their guests. It becomes their spoon to scoop their buttery hummus or mop up the Tagine while to many just a meal satiator.
These were the few of the Morroccon breads which I came across:
- Khobz is the trademark, round, crusty bread dusted with semolina baked in a wood-fired oven
- Harcha is a pan-fried semolina
- Rghaif is a flakey, layered flat bread; and,
- Baghrir which is called a ‘thousand holded pancake’.
Urbanisation
With rapid urbanisation and exposure there has been rapid migration from the rural Morroccon villages to the urban cities. The migrated individuals like in every society is trying hard to hold on to its rural practises while making them still relevant in the modern society. Accessibility and awareness has also extended education to women and are rapidly contributing to the economic growth. But among all this, bread plays a spiritual link between their home-baking heritage and everyday meals. So even if woman cannot bake their bread for their lunch (it is still quite prevalent in the villages) it is quintessentially imminent to rely on the neighbourhood bakery or communal oven which have a constant churn of freshly baked bread every hour.
Marriage of Grains
There is a strong political role is how the grain for the bread is sourced but this article is not centered around this discussion. The modern commercial white flour which most of us consume here in UK is bland in taste and since refined it is also less healthier. But most rural Morrocons favour the wholemeal wheat which is more brown with husk and since not refined it is considered more beneficial for health. The communal bakers in the city use the approach of mixing these two flours along with salt, yeast and water to make the dough. While most migrants would still lust for their locally produced unstandardised grains from their hometown which their mums and grandmothers would source for home-baking. The taste of their hometown still rules their palate.
The Bakery and its bakers
Every neighbourhood in Morocco benefits from a mosque, school, community bath, fountain and a community oven. On our way to Riad Idra through narrow by-lanes with sunset-orange clad walls you would first come across this hole-in-the-wall bakery with its own oven fired-oven. A place for the neighbourhood woman to chat while they collect bread for their lunch and a classic spot to fire the neighbourhood gossip too. You would also see black-white mopeds or men with wooden boards laden with khobz moving swiftly to the next restuarant supply. All day customers stream in and out of the bakery for a humble 10p upgrade per khobz while one baker kneads the dough and two others flatten then out while the youngest of them carefully placed their shaped dough in the great oven with a long wooden paddle. Some fifteen minutes later the golden crisp bread is out of the oven and is ready to be lined or piled by another.
It is a beautiful amalgamation of all things pure and democratic and at the same time weaving the community together in these socially networked times. With this I complete ten glorious years of food and travel blogging untainted of advertising and algorithmic satisfaction.