A ferran in Fez is a neighbourhood facility that bakes dough prepared in many homes. Local reporting in 2011 described customers queuing and waiting to collect their loaves. There may be one fire, but the bread arriving beside it comes from many households.
The baker judges the heat and the colour of each batch before loading the next board. For customers, this is not a quick retail purchase; it is the time required for bread made at home to be baked and returned. A sequence is necessary because the oven's limited space is shared across the neighbourhood.
At the front of the line, people receive their own household bread rather than a shop's product. The loaves borrow the same fire and then travel back to separate tables. That repeated journey makes the communal oven a small junction of local life.