Eish merahrah (, , "smoothed-out bread", "spread-out bread") is a

flatbread A flatbread is bread made usually with flour; water, milk, yogurt, or other liquid; and salt, and then thoroughly rolled into flattened dough. Many flatbreads are Unleavened bread, unleavened, although some are leavened, such as pita bread. A Se ...

, made with ground

fenugreek Fenugreek (; ''Trigonella foenum-graecum'') is an annual plant in the family Fabaceae, with leaves consisting of three small Glossary_of_leaf_morphology#Leaf_and_leaflet_shapes, obovate to oblong leaflets. It is cultivated worldwide as a semiar ...

seeds and

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

, eaten in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. It is part of the traditional diet of the Egyptian countryside, prepared locally in village homes in

Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ', shortened to , , locally: ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake N ...

. The loaves are flat and wide, and usually about in diameter. A soft dough is made with the maize flour and left to ferment overnight with a

sourdough Sourdough is a type of bread that uses the fermentation by naturally occurring yeast and lactobacillus bacteria to raise the dough. In addition to leavening the bread, the fermentation process produces lactic acid, which gives the bread its dis ...

starter, shaped into round loaves, and then allowed to rise or "proof" for 30 minutes before being flattened into round disks and baked. These loaves can be kept for one to two weeks in an airtight container. The addition of fenugreek seeds is thought to increase the protein content, storage length, and digestibility of the bread.

References

Arab breads Egyptian breads Flatbreads Sourdough breads {{bread-stub