Nothing can beats a fresh baked bread coming straight out of the oven with some melting butter inside and pure honey, paired with a hot steaming cup of mint tea … if that is your favorite breakfast, In Morocco this is an everyday sort of thing. And not only within the breakfast, it will be on the table for lunch and dinner and every time in between. The bread is so important for moroccan people, it’s the main consumed daily product and we produce it massively. In our local arabic language “Darija” sometimes the word “Khobz” (Bread) means Work, literally we say a common expression that means i’m going to look for a piece of bread which stands for i’m going to work.
In our food culture, we Moroccans eat a lot of bread, Bread is also as a utensil we use it to pick vegetable and meat from the dish, it fits perfectly with our traditional cuisine what consists of tagines, soups, barbeques and vegetables, and also our sharing culture because traditionally and usually we eat all from the same dish, and there’s of course a certain polite way to do it.
Until the 1980’s all Moroccan families use to make their bread at home and they carry it to be baked in “Ferran” a community oven, and they are located strategically in every neighborhood, and they baked dozens of round loaves at once, you can still find them in many ancient neighborhood in morocco But nowadays they produce their own bread to sell directly to their customers.
Every region in morocco had it own technique of making bread traditionally and also we do have a lot of kinds of bread that you will probably find on every market, In this article we’re gonna list 8 kinds of bread that you can actually find almost everywhere
Round Bread “Khobz”
The most commonly consumed, it’s cooked in the oven and it can be made using different main flour ingredient you can find bread based on white flour, barley, oat, wheat or semolina. The texture change depending on the main base ingredient but all of them are fluffy and taste so good. In some modern bakeries you can find other varieties with some tweaks to make the flavour better, they add olives or anise seeds or poppy flower seeds or sunflower seeds …
Msemmen or Rghayef or Meloui
It’s a rich traditional, pancake like bread Morocco, it’s literally like the indian, paratha. You make your paste based on flour and oil into a flat folded square or round shape, to give it it’s crunchy texture in the edges and fluffy inside, after cooking it in a hot pan. Just a perfect bread for brunch, breakfast or even just an evening snack, that goes usually with some cheese or Jam or honey.
Rziza
Which means the judge turban, because of the technique used to make it. It demands a very hight baking skills, the recipe is the same as Msemmen basically but the technique is different, it’s like the Chinese noodles you need make a long tube of dough you stretch it and make it long, you keep this process till obtaining a very long thin wire dough, you shape it round around your hand like a turban you put it to the pan and gently try to make it as a pancake, when it’s cooked the edges are very golden brownish colors nicely crunchy, and the inside stays always fluffy. we call that also the moroccan spaghetti.
Krachel or Gorss or Brioche
The moroccan Sweet Rolls, and this is such a common memory for us moroccans, when it’s freshly baked by your grandmother you just cut it in half and put some butter on it. The perfect snack for an afternoon tea with family or friends. The texture is so soft with some sesame seeds and granulated sugar on top just AMAZING !!
Batbout or Mkhamer
It’s a soft and chewy texture, a perfect bread for some savory fillings, you can make them a one bite size or bigger like a sandwich, Or it can be also the breakfast bread with some jam or honey spreaded on the top of it. The recipe is similar to the Moroccan Regular Bread “Khobz” but it’s cooked in a Hot pan.
Harcha
Beghrir
The moroccan crepes, or the crepe with a 1000 hole, you might imagined the holes and how spongy and soft the texture will be, the perfect crepe is the one that has more holes. And this an essential component in Aid’s Table, the day that marks the end of Ramadan the holy month
Medfouna
Called also The Berber pizza, a flat round bread stuffed usually with onions and meat, and cooked in a special traditional clay and rocks oven, it’s originally a leftover dish prepared by the end of the week. A super tasty and rich kind of bread that you will find only in the south west of Morocco in Erfoud, Rissani and Rachidia. A pure dessert dish.
3 Comments
Terry Hanson
Please help me. We went to Morocco souk and bought a flat bread from a seller. It had a sweet taste and could be roled. I was told it is only made in Marrakech do you have the name and recipe please
Mohamed Mohamed Benmokhtar
That should be Msemmen or Rghayef and the sweetener is honey or some kind of Jam … if you have a picture of it send it to me and i’ll give you more specifics 😉
Bouchra
That’s M’semen. You can find it anywhere in Morocco. The guy was pulling your leg. ?
Recipes can found on YouTube.
Cheers!
I hope you had a great experience in our beautiful country.