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Joe Ray
Food & Travel / Words & Photos
EATING
THE
MOTHERLAND
Food writer and photographer Joe Ray's gastronomic visits in Europe - the home of his ancestors - and beyond.
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Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Manna in the Sand
Under the stars in the Algerian Sahara, our guides make bread in the sand.
One kneads dough in a mixing bowl while another prepares the fire. When the cinders are ready, Salah moves them to the side, and creates a saucer-shaped crater in the sand into which goes the flat round of dough. The whole thing is covered with the cinders and left to cook.
Half an hour later, they again move the cinders and lo, the bread.
Curiously, the sand doesn’t really stick – there’s a thickness to the crust that doesn’t allow it to grab and any little bits disappear with a quick rinse of water.
We’re so far from the rest of the world that at night, there’s no light pollution. Warm bread under the stars.