Why is there bread at every meal?

Khobz — a round, flat, slightly chewy semolina-and-wheat loaf — arrives before the food and stays through the meal. It's torn with the right hand and used to scoop tagine, dip bissara, mop harira, push couscous onto a spoon. There are no individual plates in a traditional meal: the tagine sits in the middle, the bread is each person's interface with it.

Most families don't bake. They mix the dough at home, mark each loaf with the family's pattern, and a child runs it to the neighbourhood ferran (wood-fired communal oven) where the ferrane bakes the quarter's bread for 1 to 2 MAD a loaf. The bread comes back warm and is on the table within twenty minutes.

Bread is sacred. Dropping a piece on the floor and not picking it up is shocking. Stale bread is left in a bag on a wall or doorstep for the man who collects it for animal feed — never in the bin. If you can't finish your loaf, leave it on the table. Don't throw it out.