Live always at the edge of poetic possibilty, even in the face of severe prose. - Walter Bruggemann


Thursday, May 1, 2008

Bread Baking in Darajat

Unc, this one's for you! Several times a day the women of Darajat would bake a bread called hoobus in an oven called a taboon. The taboons were inside of these little huts and were placed throughout the village. The bread is a traditional Bedouin bread that is served with every meal. It's large and flat, sort of like pita but not really. You use the bread to scoop up just about everything that is served, tahina, hummus, salata, roz w'bendora (rice with vegetables), labane with zahtar. Really yummy.

The dough was prepared in their kitchens and then taken down to the taboon. Several days ago I posted a photo of a woman walking down to the taboon with the dough on top of her head.
The cone with lid is where the dough is put to bake. She lifts the top off of the cone and places one loaf inside of the cone. The loaves take only 5 minutes...maybe to bake.
Here she is taking the dough balls and placing one of them into extra flour. She's getting ready to prepare the dough for baking. You can see the freshly baked hoobus on the tray. Hoobus is good.....but hoobus directly from the taboon, next best thing to heaven.
She takes the dough and stretches it 'pizza style' until it's ready to go into the taboon for baking.
My 'roomie' getting a close up shot of the dough going into the taboon to bake. It layed over some sort of mold inside. The top was placed on and minutes later, hot hoobus.
I liked the crispy parts. The loaves are about 12 inches in diameter.

Our class taking our lunch break. Hot soup for a hot day, salads and hoobus. Bon Appetite!

3 comments:

Dina said...

Give us this day our daily bread.
When you see how it must be made 2 or even 3 times a day in the village taboon, you catch the meaning of daily bread.
Oh, and I forgive you for publishing the butt shot. :0
Great post.

Jane said...

You sure have done things that in all my 30+ trips to Israel, I've never done! Should I add this to my "To Do list?" :-) Jane

Suzanne said...

Possibly, I recommend it!