WFP & Maison Choc Turn Baladi Bread Into Chocolate Crisps

Few ingredients carry the emotional weight of baladi bread in Egypt. It is breakfast, dinner, backup plan, side dish, routine, comfort, and for many, one of the country’s clearest symbols of food security.

Now, that familiar staple is showing up somewhere unexpected: inside chocolate.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has teamed up with Maison Choc—Egypt’s first bean-to-bar chocolate factory founded by Chef Clara Dayoub—to create Balady Bread Crisps, a limited collaboration that turns one of Egypt’s most everyday foods into something slightly more unexpected.

The product combines crisped-up baladi bread with artisanal chocolate from Maison Choc and honey sourced from Mosaab, a farmer in Luxor who benefited from WFP-supported training programmes. His honey becomes part of a wider story the collaboration is trying to tell—one about local agriculture, community-led support, and the ways food can sustain livelihoods beyond the plate.

As Chef Clara Dayoub and Founder of Maison Choc puts it; “Food is sacred. It carries memory, dignity, and the power to transform communities. Through our collaboration with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), we wanted to create something that goes beyond flavour — a product rooted in Egyptian heritage, crafted with purpose, and capable of creating real impact."

The idea isn’t to reinvent baladi bread so much as reframe it. By placing such a familiar ingredient into a different context, the collaboration opens up a conversation around food security in Egypt and the people whose work sits behind it.

Maison Choc, known for producing chocolate directly from cocoa bean to finished bar at its Sheikh Zayed factory, developed the product as an advocacy-led initiative. Chef Clara will also match a portion of proceeds from each purchase with a direct contribution to WFP programmes in Egypt supporting more vulnerable communities in securing sustainable access to food and livelihoods.

Whether you come for the chocolate or stay for the idea, it’s probably not every day you see baladi bread ending up in the dessert category.