Ghriba

Morocco’s ghriba bahla is a round baked sweet with deep cracks across its surface. Pale dough shows through the cracks, and in the mouth it crumbles like sand. The name ghriba, however, does not refer only to bahla, which is made with wheat flour and fat. Some versions use almonds, semolina, coconut and other ingredients, and sweets with similar names are made with different flours and fats across North Africa and farther east.

Cracks on top, hollows underneath

A typical bahla dough combines wheat flour, sugar, butter and vegetable oil with sesame seeds and almonds. Working the fat through all of the flour gives a texture that crumbles finely when bitten. Toasted sesame seeds and pieces of almond add a toasty note to the pale dough.

Unlike a sponge leavened with whipped eggs, the dough is firm enough to roll by hand and set down. When the dough is shaped into thick rounds and baked, deep fissures appear on top. Traditional baking sheets have rows of round bumps, and dough placed on them is left with shallow hollows on the bottom. On a flat sheet, the bottom stays flat too, so turning a cookie over shows which kind of sheet was used.

Some methods first apply top heat and then switch to regular baking, while others bake at a higher temperature. The way the cracks form also changes with how the heat reaches the dough and how much the dough dries, so the same formula does not always produce the same fissures. Fresh from the oven they are fragile, so they are left to settle on the sheet for a while before being moved. When stacking them for storage, one practice is to place paper between the layers to catch falling crumbs.

Where did the “silly” name come from?

Cook Nargisse Benkabbou explains the Moroccan Arabic bahla as meaning something like “silly, a little goofy.” Her own guess is that the name may come from the way the cookies crack when baked and crumble in the mouth. Although the meaning of the name has been passed down, it is not clear who gave this name to its appearance, or how. It is also said to be “because it looks like it is laughing.”

Mlewza: almonds bound with egg and baked

Morocco’s mlewza, also called ghriba d’louz, has a different mouthfeel from flour-based bahla. In a recipe (ingredient proportions and method) that food writer Nada Kiffa inherited from her family, blanched almonds are ground with sugar, and eggs, a little butter and apricot jam are added. The nut paste is bound with egg, rolled into balls, coated in powdered sugar, lightly indented on top and baked.

The apricot jam is used to add moistness, and the amount is adjusted according to the quality of the almonds and the size of the eggs. Cracks on the surface do not mean that the inside is made of the same flour and fat as bahla. The ghriba sold even at small shopfronts in the medina include kinds based on almonds, semolina and other ingredients, and several textures appear side by side at the tea table.

Constantine’s version is made by whipping the fat

In a recipe from Constantine introduced by Algerian cook Soulef, the sweet is made from three ingredients, without eggs. Pastry smen, with its moisture removed, is beaten with powdered sugar until white and creamy, and flour is added until the dough is firm enough to shape. Both the choice of fat and the way it is mixed before the flour goes in differ from bahla, which mixes butter and vegetable oil. The smen specified here is not an aged, strongly scented butter but a clarified, solidified fat for pastry-making.

What Soulef recounts is a childhood memory of finding and eating the cookies her mother had hidden in a tin in case of unexpected guests. They were an Eid sweet and, at the same time, a keeping sweet for welcoming people.

Different flours in Tunisia

Ghrayba homs from the Tunisian confectioner Masmoudi is based on chickpeas and uses sugar, wheat flour, olive oil and butter. The same shop also has droo, made with sorghum. Some versions use wheat flour and sesame, some bind almonds with egg, and others use chickpeas or sorghum: even with similar shapes and names, the main ingredients differ. Even among sweets that resemble shortbread, there are differences such as whether eggs are used and whether the fat is whipped.

A shared spelling and a medieval sweet rich in fat

The same Arabic spelling, غريبة, is pronounced close to ghraybeh in the Levant, ghorayeba in Egypt and ghriba in Morocco. Food historian Anny Gaul interprets it as a diminutive expression meaning “a little wondrous thing.” A 1934 cookbook by a former Egyptian royal court cook also includes a sweet of flour, sugar and clarified butter. Though the written name is the same, the formulas now differ from place to place.

An older point of comparison is “nuhud al-adhra,” which Charles Perry discussed on the basis of four 13th-century cookbooks from the eastern Arab world. The name means “virgin’s breasts.” Flour, clarified butter and sugar are used in equal amounts; the flour is lightly toasted in the fat, then the sugar is mixed in and the sweet is baked. Perry considers that it may be a predecessor of today’s ghriba. Both the step of heating the flour first and the equal proportions differ from modern bahla. In Morocco there are versions with cracked surfaces and versions bound with egg and almonds; in Algeria the fat is whipped; and in Tunisia a variety of flours is used. Under a shared name, a wide variety of ingredients and methods has been passed down.

Glossary