Ferran Bakeries

A ferran is a communal oven, and the institution works like this: households make their bread dough at home, shape it, put it on a board, and a child or a neighbour carries it to the oven in the quarter, where the ferrane bakes it in a wood-fired chamber for a small fee per loaf and returns it, and everyone knows whose is whose by the marks pressed into the dough. It survives because ovens are expensive, wood is efficient at scale, and the bread is better - and because the ferran is also where news moves. The same ovens bake tangia, the Marrakech pot of meat and preserved lemon left to cook slowly in the ashes, and they heat water for the hammam next door in the traditional arrangement where oven, bath and mosque share a fire and a water supply. Watching one work for ten minutes explains more about how a medina functions than most museums.

What to look for

• Household dough - families' own loaves brought in on boards and marked for identification.
• A fee per loaf - the oven paid for the baking, not the bread.
• Tangia in the ashes - the Marrakech slow-cooked pot left in the same fire.
• A shared fire - oven, hammam and mosque supplied together in the old arrangement.

When to go

All year; mid-morning and late afternoon, when the batches go in. Half an hour.

Good to know

These are working ovens, not attractions - stand aside and ask before photographing. They are hot and crowded at peak times. Not all will sell bread to a passer-by, since the loaves belong to households. Finding one means asking locally.

Nearby

Every medina has several; ask at a hammam or a grocer.