SC - Moroccan Bread

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I'm no baker. I can do brownies, cookies, sweet breads, cakes, and 
pies from scratch, but i've never felt that yeasted breads were worth 
the trouble

This partly comes from student living. I lived in a house with about 
a dozen people. A friend there loved to bake. He'd make 4 loaves of 
whole wheat-oatmeal bread and they wouldn't last 1 hour after he 
pulled them out of the oven.

And partly because i'm not a big bread eater. I go for weeks without bread.

But the bread in Morocco intrigued me. I've looked through all my 
Moroccan cook books and none gives a recipe for the most common bread 
in Morocco.

It's a round and fairly flat loaf - maybe about 6 inches in diameter 
and less than 2 inches high. It is made, my daughter said, of hard 
wheat/Durham wheat. I say semolina flour because it is a lovely pale 
yellow from the color of the flour and has a distinct flavor - 
there's no egg and no colorant in the dough. Or are hard wheat flour, 
Durham wheat flour, and semolina flour the same thing?

My daughter watched it being made but has never baked bread, so isn't 
exactly sure of the method. Basically the dough is made - they use 
powdered yeast these days-, kneaded for some time, then pulled into 
even pieces and formed into round loaves (i'm not sure if it is 
kneaded again), covered with a cloth and left for a certain amount of 
time... 1 hour? The bottom is dusted with finely cracked grain - my 
cookbooks suggest cornmeal, but i think it's fine semolina. It is 
then baked. It is not given a second rise.

I assume that it is just made of the special flour, water, salt, and 
yeast - but as i said, i'm a bread ignoramus - a tiny bit of sugar to 
feed the yeast?

The bread is not crusty and crunchy on the outside like a French 
loaf, just brown and chewy. The inside is a lovely pale yellow with a 
particular fragrance and flavor of semolina - it is also rather chewy 
- - but then, it is not made for eating in slices, but for scooping up 
salads and dips and sopping up sauces, so being firm is a good thing.

Any ideas on how to recreate this?

Thanks

Anahita