Morrocan Bread, Kbohz

For New Year’s Day my MIL made a Morrocan stew and I was asked to make some bread, so after a bit of research I found a recipe for Morrocan bread, kbohz, that you are supposed to eat with stew.  Apparently they don’t use utensils, they just eat it with this bread.  We didn’t do that, that would be a carb-overload, but I wanted to try the bread anyway.

White Bread

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar

1 tbs yeat
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 ¼ cup warm water, 105-110 degrees F
Additional flour for kneading
Cornmeal, semolina or oil for the pan

Prepare 2 9” round cake pans by oiling or dusting the pans with a little cornmeal or semolina.
Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl.  Make a large well in the center of the flour mixture and add the yeast.  Add the oil and water to the well, mixing to dissolve the yeast first, and then stirring the entire contents of the bowl to incorporate the water into the flour.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and begin kneading.  If necessary, add flour in small amounts if the dough is very sticky, or water in small amounts if it is not coming together. Continue kneading for 10 minutes, or until the dough is very smooth and elastic.
Divide the dough in half and shape each portion in a smooth circular mound.  Place onto the prepared pans and cover with a towel.  Allow to rest for 10 minutes.
After the dough has rested, use the palm of your hand to flatten the dough into circles about ¼” thick.  Cover with a towel and leave to rise about 1 hour or until the dough springs back when pressed lightly with a finger.

Preheat oven to 435 degrees.

Score the top of the bread with a very sharp knife or poke the dough with a fork in several places. Bake the bread for about 20 minutes.  Rotate the pans about halfway through the baking time.  The loaves should be nicely colored and sound hollow when tapped.  Transfer the bread to a rack or towel-lined basket to cool.

I also made a wheat-cumin bread which I liked more than the white.  Replace 2 cups of the white flour with wheat flour and replace the sugar with 2 tbs honey and add 2 tsp cumin seeds to the flour mixture.  Prepare the bread the same as above.

Each recipe makes 2 loaves of bread and each loaf serves 6-8 people if you just eat bread with your meal, if you plan to use the bread in place of utensils a loaf will probably serve 4 people.

As far as bread goes this was really pretty easy, and tasted pretty good.  The outside was crusty but not too hard and the inside was soft.  It did have a smaller crumb than I was anticipating, but it wasn’t dense by any means. All in all a good flavored bread without a whole lot of effort.