Khobz

What it is

Harrell’s dictionary of Moroccan Arabic lists xobz as bread and xobza as a loaf of bread, diminutive xbiza.¹ Morocco World News calls the round flatbreads khobz and writes that in Morocco they often replace knife and fork and mop up the last of the food on the plate.²

In the Rif, according to Fathia Benali, bread is by far the most important staple: it accompanies every dish, and since cutlery is rarely used, food is taken from the dish with bread.³ According to the study for WIPO and OMPIC, the host breaks the bread by hand and hands it out, and people eat with small pieces of bread dipped in the sauce.⁴

History

In Chefchaouen, in the goldsmiths’ quarter near the Ras El Ma spring, stands the Rif Sebanine oven, built under Emir Mohammed Ben Rachid between 1540 and 1560.⁵ It is fired only with wood, bread is still baked and sold there, and of the 18 ovens originally counted only a handful remain.⁶

How it is made

In their study of cereals, bread and ovens in the El Hoceima area, Dominique Caubet and Yildiz Aumeeruddy-Thomas describe how flour is kneaded with salt, water and sourdough in a kneading bowl, the ṣǝḥfa.⁷ Each household marks its bread with its own sign, for instance a row of holes, so that the loaves are not mixed up; the large public oven to which everyone brings their bread is called fǝṛṛān in Chefchaouen.⁸

Harrell’s dictionary explains ferran as a public oven where people bring their bread to be baked, and frarni as the person who runs it.⁹ In Tetouan the dough was kneaded early in the morning and, once risen, taken to the oven by the terrah, a boy who went from house to house collecting the bread boards and brought each loaf back to its house without mixing them up.¹⁰ The baker was paid with one of the loaves he baked, the terrah with a small loaf made specially for him.¹¹

When

According to Hespress, almost every Moroccan knows the picture of a mother or grandmother kneading the dough for the day’s bread in the morning.¹² Above all in the big cities, however, bread is now bought from bakeries or from women selling it by the roadside.¹³