Mofo gasy
Form: Similar to muffins or buns
Country of origin: Madagascar
What distinguishes it from other methods of bread making: Ball of rice dough or batter cooked in a special baking tin
Category of bread: (7 and 8) This African bread, made from flours of various grains and steam-cooked like the Malian widjila, and in this case, over glowing embers, are difficult to categorize. It could possibly be categorized with the soft crumb breads, even if the mofo gasy doesn’t really have a soft part. In any case, it does not have a crust.
Particularity: It is the archetypal Madagascan bread
Ingredients: Rice flour; leaven or baker’s yeast; warm water; sugar (optional)
Madagascar
Wheat has never held a place of honor in Madagascar. Even the presence of France up until the independence of the island on June 26, 1960, wheat never threatened the hegemony of rice. Wheat is actually referred to as varim-bazaha, meaning “foreign rice,” which says a lot about how Madagascans view it, even though they have had outside influences with the numerous waves of immigration. Botanists actually call varim-bazaha “oryza sativa”, the rice that originally came from Asia, and which has today conquered the planet.
French bread, such as the baguette, managed to dig out a small niche in the Tananrive (Antananarivo) shops, but it is to this day called mofo vazaha, or “foreign bread,” and is rice bread cooked over hot embers or over a fire. In the agro food industry, it has been the subject of clashes hidden from the eyes of most.
The ingredients are mixed in a dish or any recipient you like, so as to obtain dough with a consistency very near that of thick pancake batter, rather than an actual bread dough. The batter is traditionally prepared the day before and left to rest all night in a cloth. In the morning, small pieces are taken from this and formed into balls. The balls are placed in a greased pan, referred to as a moukati, specially designed for this purpose. The pan consists of six openings for what are to become mofo gasy. The moukati is placed over the fire or embers. When they are half-cooked, they are turned over. Mofo gasy is the base of the Malagasy breakfast.