Culinary Explorer
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Mafuna (مفنة)
Created by Chef Zohra
A Rif oven bread with a real sourdough tang: two slow rises, a seeded scored top, and the chewy crumb that holds olive oil, tagine sauce, and a full table.
The dough tells you first. When the beldi yeast is alive, it smells lightly sour and warm, like flour that has remembered yesterday's bread. If the yeast is tired, don't force it. Sourcing comes before technique, and no hot oven rescues a dead leaven.
Mafuna belongs to the Rif around Al Hoceima, one of des cuisines marocaines, not some generic Moroccan flatbread. It is an oven bread, rested through two rises, scored, seeded, and sent into strong heat. The old ferran teaches the hand before the clock: you read the oven by its heat, then trust the crust to form quickly so the inside stays thick and chewy.
At home, use a baking stone or a covered heavy pot to imitate that first fierce heat. The cover traps moisture from the dough long enough for the loaf to swell, then you uncover it so the crust browns and firms. Tear it warm, not sliced thin. Mafuna wants olive oil, olives, a tagine to scoop clean, and one more person at the table.
Ingredients
active beldi wild yeast starter or mature sourdough starter
Quantity
150g
at peak
strong bread flour
Quantity
500g
plus more for dusting
fine semolina or very fine durum flour
Quantity
150g
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| active beldi wild yeast starter or mature sourdough starterat peak | 150g |
| strong bread flourplus more for dusting | 500g |
| fine semolina or very fine durum flour | 150g |
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