Our Daily Bread

Half a lifetime of daily visits to bakeries in Europe and I’ve never ever wondered about what it takes to make delicious bread! I’ve always taken for granted the availability of it and worse, I’ve often thrown away half a loaf only a day old to replace it with freshly baked bread. Easy come easy go, but things are very different now!

In the Valley of Ourika there is only one bread type available and it isn’t very nice. There are no bakeries and once a day in the morning a small truck comes from Marrakech and supplies all the little shops with the tasteless white round breads. My favourite bread is dark whole bread, preferably with a mix of seeds. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten a piece of bread I really enjoyed eating and my quest for a good alternative has begun.

As soon as the grain is ground into flour it starts to lose its nutritional value rapidly so instead of buying the flour we’ve decided to start from the beginning, the grain. We buy the grain from the weekly market. It is then washed, dried and sorted carefully before we take it to the mill close by to grind it into flour.

This morning the wife of Brahim helped us with the cleaning and sorting of the grain. We sat on a sunny terrace while our children played and even though it is a time consuming labour I really enjoyed doing it! Below a few images.