Bread is big in Morocco.  A meal is not complete without bread, and it is always fresh and always good.  You wouldn’t catch anyone mopping up their tagine with white sliced ‘plastic’ bread.  It has to be the real deal.

Many of my memories from Morocco involve bread: women at home kneeling on the floor kneading dough in a gsar (wide earthenware dish); rounds of dough rising underneath warm sheepskins; children in the street ferrying loaves on planks of wood on their heads to and from the neighbourhood bakery; men baking thousands of loaves each day in huge wood-fired ovens, the smell wafting out onto the street; or women in mountain villages baking one at a time in  tiny home-made mud ovens at home; people arriving home with their freshly baked loaves for dinner, each marked with the family’s own signature gashes; the delicious combination of fresh bread and olive oil, enjoyed on arrival in many homes; the mother of the household tearing the warm disks into rough wedges and plonking them in front of each diner, shouting “eat, eat!”