Amslane Day 5- Orchard hikes and learning bread making
A gaggle of children lead by Yousef and Fatim followed Souad and I on our walk and interviews with women preparing touga in fields along the river. (It turned out later that our host mother Yemena had sent them to follow and see what we were doing which is rather bothersome). They were so curious, even following up the river and on a more hazardous part of the west side canal. In our attempt to find the path leading up the hill, (which we did not succeed in), we still got a wonderful view of the village from the mountain slope above some beautiful apple orchards. The irises popping up among the roots of fruit trees, add such beautiful speckles of purple and brilliant fresh green to the terraces. All the rosacea fruit trees blossoming are beautiful. Too bad we won’t be here still to taste their fruits later in the summer, but we have tried some walnuts saved from earlier in the year and they were the best I have ever had, really wonderful flavour.
Got to see the whole process for making ‘tanort’ a type of ‘aharom’ or ‘arrom’- aka bread). Yemena removed some of the hot coals from the curved oven into a clay ‘lecanoon’- the little stone oven usually used to slow cook tagines. She then wiped down the walls of the oven with a rag to clear the soot. After parting the risen dough into three she wetted one piece and worked it into a ball and then disk. The disk is then pressed onto the side walls of the oven and wetted again then left it to bake. Depending on how crispy, charred, or if she forgets the bread will bake for 20-35 minutes. Yemena used a crowbar type tool to pry the bread off each side of the taket oven, and then proceeded to hit off chunks of the black charred bottom edge that was closer to the hot coals.
The end result was a tanned large domed round bread thicker than other flatbreads but not a loaf. Tanort is one the staple breads, especially in this household. Many people have gas ovens or make flat breads like arsis in a frying pan, but tanort is a tradition that has upheld in popularity. And as basically every meal revolves around bread either as the main item or as the utensil to eat everything else, they have to make a lot each day. The women bake either a bit batch in the morning or two batches while preparing other food throughout the day. As someone who doesn’t normally eat bread it’s rather overwhelming to be fed so much, but it has also been really interesting trying so many varieties and observing or helping to make the different kinds.
After lunch I went with Yemena to feed the cow with Yousef. The feed this time was touga (fodder plants) with a bit of alim (straw) mixed in- but the touga was mostly not the rice species amood. Yousef also took some to the large black rabbit who lives in a room by the taket oven on top of the house.