Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Milling the grain


We were riding through Sakkara village and saw these two women seated on the ground facing each other milling grain with an old stone hand mill. I suspect that they were grinding sorghum and possibly fenugreek to make a very old type of local bread. It's extremely thin and crispy with a slight herbal taste...Egyptian crackers. I love it and it isn't something that you can buy anywhere. You have to get it from the village women.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I congratulate you on this photo ,

It is really historical ,
I think you should had got out of your car and take a closer shot , because very soon you will never see this scene again , not in Egypt , not anywhere else
This lovely woman is really doing that for the pleasure of it , but for sure it is much cheaper to buy the ingredient ready . .

She uses the same old way the ancient Egyptian used when making bread
It is strange how many things have not developed yet in these 7000 years in Egypt .

The type of the local crispy bread you mean is called “ Bat tawo “ unfortunately there is no English word for it , nor even an Arabic word , batawo is already a history
It is the most lovely thing you may ever eat , I miss it , I have not seen it in years , it is my favorite thing , it is very very delicious when eaten with milk like corn flakes , please if you get any soon , send me some .

brattcat said...

I think I would love the taste and texture of these Egyptian crackers.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani said...

LOL...hard to get out of my car when I was on a horse. We were only about 4 metres away. Any closer we might have stepped on them. Luckily the women in this village know me and are great about letting me take photos.

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