Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Meloui | Moroccan Breakfast Pastry

Rghaif is the general name given to leavened or unleavened bread/pastry in Morocco. These are made using mostly all purpose flour, wheat, semolina flours etc and are usually sold as street food. They are typically used to break fast during Eid -ul - Fitr as well. 

When Ramadan was around the corner, I saw as usual several delicacies flying around in the blogging world. This time I did try out the yeasted Moroccan Ramadan breakfast pastry/ pancake called Meloui from here.

This simple yeasted pastry is made using all purpose and semolina flours and it is shaped by rolling the strip of dough like a carpet/rug. I didn't master the art of folding a meloui but yup it came out well and tastewise was yum. Its usually served with honey-butter sauce, but I preferred spicy side and went for another Moroccan side zaalouk  made using eggplant.

Ingredients:
All Purpose Flour: 2 cups
Fine ground Semolina: 2 cups
Sugar: 2 tsp
Salt: 2 tsp
Instant Yeast: 1/4tsp
Warm Water: 1.5 cup approximately.

Folding and shaping the pastry
Vegetable oil
Soft Butter
Fine semolina

Preparation:
Mix the dry ingredients of flour,semolina, saugar, salt and yeast in a bowl and add in enough water to form a dough that is soft and easily kneadable. You can add more water/flour as needed to prevent it from being dry / sticky respectively.

Transfer it to an oiled (not floured) counter and with oiled hands knead it somemore time to get a smooth and elastic dough.

Pinch off palm sized pieces of the dough and shape into a round ball. Place it in an oiled/lined baking sheet / bowl and let it rest for atleast 20 minutes covered with plastic wrap.

Take each ball and with oiled hands/ with oiled rolling pin roll it out on counter -preferbaly oiled- to a circle as thin as possible. 

Dot it with butter and then semolina.
Fold this circle in thirds like a letter- fold top third/left third to the centre, then bring the bottom third/right third up to cover the first fold. We will be getting a rectangular piece.
Dot this strip of dough with more butter  followed by semolina.
Then fold again into thirds like a letter. 
You will end up with a very narrow strip of rectangle.
Flatten this strip to remove any air bubbles and sprinkle more semolina.
Then roll it up like a rug/coil pinching the loose end of the dough to the coil to seal it.
Place the rug/roll upright on an oiled tray and cover with a plastic wrap.
Continue this process with all the other dough pieces.

Take a coil/roll and flatten it into a 1/8" thick disc using hands or rolling pin (carefully so that the folds don't disappear within the circle) and cook on a preheated pan/tawa on medium  heat. Turn the sides several times after few seconds till both sides are dotted with brown spots and cooked properly.

Serve warm with sweet syrups or spicy sides like I did.


The shape looked like naan and it was nicely layered inside - this especially if you could flatten it with hand and not rolling pin. the texture was bready and it was very filling. The eggplant side was perfect with this and that post will be up soon.


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