Msemen
A square Moroccan layered griddle bread made from lightly yeasted wheat dough, stretched thin, folded with semolina and butter, and cooked until crisp and golden.
Algeria
Recipes by the places recorded in their sources.
Algeria
Matlouk (Claudia Roden's dairy-free oven method)
A dairy-free Algerian semolina bread made with yeast, shaped as one round loaf, brushed with egg yolk and baked in a 400°F oven.
Date syrup and date pulp (dibs, silan family)
A thick, dark, very sweet syrup made from dates, known as dibs, rub, silan or date molasses. It sweetens tahini and desserts and glazes or sauces savoury dishes across the Middle East and North Africa.
Elevated risk
Sun-dried mushrooms
Sun-dried mushrooms are mushrooms spread in open sunlight and left to lose their water to solar heat and moving air, a method recorded in Nigeria, Tanzania, Mexico and among Algerian desert truffle gatherers.
Mhadjeb (Nour El Houda’s wheat and semolina version)
An Algerian stuffed flatbread made from wheat flour and fine semolina, filled with spiced tomato, onion and carrot, folded into packets and griddled.
Kesra
This Algerian semolina and wheat flatbread rises with yeast, browns in an oiled skillet and finishes crisp in the oven. It is the author's leavened adaptation, not the unleavened semolina baseline.
Khobz el dar
An Algerian round loaf made with semolina, wheat flour, milk, egg and sesame; this source version uses an overnight-free yeast method with three rests and an egg glaze.
High risk
Smen
North Africa's matured butter: soured milk churned, the butter washed, heavily salted and left for months until lipolysis turns it into a pungent, cheese-like seasoning used a spoonful at a time.