[Sca-cooks] OOP Egyptian bread, was Period Islamic breads

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Dana/Ximena wrote:
>Since you seem pretty knowledgable about Middle Eastern
>breads, I'm hoping you (or someone on the list) can advise
>me.  I have a (modern) Egyptian recipe that calls for
>"crisp local bread."  Any idea what this might be called
>outside Egypt, or what I might be able to find that would
>do?  The recipe is for Fatta.

I am not very knowledgeable about Egyptian cuisine. I've read recipes
in Tess Mallos' Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook (hardly complete but
quite excellent and covers an amazing amount of territory) and cooked
a few, but i haven't eaten in any Egyptian restaurants, haven't been
to Egypt, and don't have any Egyptian friends.

But i was curious, so i've been surfing the web. Here's what i've
turned up so far

One website has a recipe, Om Ali (or Umm Ali) that require "roqaq (a
type of cracker bread)" or gullash
http://touregypt.net/recipes/ommal.htm
according to another website, this dish is "a delight named for Mamluk queen"
(i just wonder how close this is to matzah... or Ak-mak, a commercial
Middle Eastern cracker bread... since i don't know what roqaq looks
like... There's an Egyptian food store not too far away, and i should
drop in and check it out...)

Another recipe for the same dish substitutes phyllo

Here's a photo of some kind of Egyptian cracker bread
http://gbgm-umc.org/photos/africa/9157845m.stm

As for daily bread:

http://members.home.net/ahmedheissa/recbread.htm
aish beladi, country bread

http://www.egyptmonth.com/mag06012000/mag5.htm
semit - sesame bread rings

This page has several photos of people making, baking, and selling bread
http://extrajoce.free.fr/country2.php3?country2=Lower%20Egypt

I don't know if any of this is really useful...

Anahita