Not a cob!

Fiona went to Morocco again recently, and came back raving about some of the bread that she had. Not the first time this has happened after she's been somewhere on holiday, but this time around tracking down what the bread was was quite a bit easier! After a little back-and-forth on trying to describe what the bread was like and a surprisingly short bit of speculative Googling, it turns out that it's the most common Morrocan bread, usually called khobz or khubz, but it also apparently goes by kesra or agroum. I've never been to Morocco, and never eaten this bread either (at least not knowingly), so this is a bit of a shot in the dark for me. I figured given that handicap, I'd best see if I could find a vaguely "authentic" looking recipe from the many, many options available and actually follow it properly. It turns out that there was another constraint lurking - we don't have any semolina in stock at the moment, and Fiona couldn't find it in the supermarket yesterday, which further constrained that option down a bit; in the end I settled on this recipe.

Khobz

Ingredients

• 500g Strong white flour
• 15g Salt (~2 tsp)
• 10g Dried yeast (~3 tsp)
• ~2 tsp Sugar
• 315ml Warm water
• 15g Olive oil (~2 tbsp)

Method

1. Mix flour and salt in a bowl, then form a well.
2. Place yeast and sugar in the centre of the well, and stir in a small amount of water to dissolve.
3. Add remaining water and oil, and mix to form a dough.
4. Knead until smooth.
5. Divide into two balls, then leave covered to rest for 15 mins.
6. Flatten each ball into a flat round approx 5mm thick.
7. Cover and leave to rise for ~1.5hrs.*
8. Prick surface with a fork, then bake at 225C for ~20-30mins until golden brown.

*It was around ~18C in the room. The recipe I followed suggested that the dough should spring back when pressed lightly.

Here's the dough in step 5, just before resting. I'd forgotten how easy and fun low hydration bread doughs with white flour could be!

At the end of step 6, just before the rise. 5mm is really quite thin...

There's not actually all that difference after the rise; I'm hoping that it's had long enough! Regardless though, I'm impatient, so it's going in the oven...

And straight out of the oven! Compared with the photos I've seen online, I think perhaps they're a bit too thin - I did think the ~5mm seemed rather too thin at the time I was pressing it out (in fairness, the original recipe said 1/4", but that's still only just over 6mm)...

The bottom sides - I decided to flip the loaves over for the last ~6 mins of baking, as the tops were nicely golden but the undersides seemed rather pale. My understanding is that these are normally baked in a large clay oven that looks vaguely like a pizza oven, so presumably they would bake rapidly on the underside through conduction as well.

They look pretty good apart from being thin though! We'll have to see what they're like when they've cooled off!

It turned out a little over-salted in my opinion, and definitely somewhat too dense - I guess those two might have been related. But it was certainly enjoyable still. I think I may need to revisit this one soon, perhaps once I've got some semolina; it was a rather low effort, low commitment bread that I think could be nice and versatile if I get it right!