How to Do the Long Lived Ethiopian Food, Injera.

What is injera?

It is a sourdough-risen flatbread with a unique, slightly spongy texture. Traditionally made from teff flour, it is a national dish in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. Injera is very useful for people who is suffering with Celiac disease as it is gluten free. What makes injera is teff, and teff is 100% gluten free. So, using teff you can do breads, cakes or any recipe you can think of. I hope this steps of how to do injera may give you a good knowledge about teff and how it is changed to a product.

-5 cups teff flour

-Fermentation starter(Baking Yeast)

-warm water (do not use hot water)

-Race seeds

The first thing we need, to make injera is Teff(explain teff). The type of teff we need is Brown or white teff. But we need to make sure the teff we bought is processed and grinded to Flour, which is the starting martial to make injera. And the amount of Teff to be processed to flour depends on our need or how many injeras we are going to make but for this Experiment 5 cups of processed teff meaning Flour is enough.

A medium sized bowl is perfect to mix every ingredient I am going tell you. Now our Flour is ready to be mixed with water (make sure the water is boild). Use warm water (Don’t use hot water) As we have five cups of Flour we need to make our water little in amount. From 300-450 ml of water is enough. We need to make the mixing until we see a change to slurry paste like or look.

We need new ingredient which is a natural teff yeast or Baker's yeast (it is fermented dough that will enable injera to have good flavor and take off carbon dioxide during baking). For our case, 2 or 3 spoons of Baker's yeast is only needed to be added to the slurry paste like (the pervious result we got by mixing the water with flour)

Now, we have reached on a step we will leave our slurry alone in our bowl. The time we will wait may differ based on how many injeras we are going to make and based on our place. Ethiopia and Eritrea is the best place to find the real test of injera, but the day they will leave their slurry may take up to four days. As you are going to make a small amount of injera leave it covered for 12 hours in a warm spot covered with dish towel. Don’t ever stir it or try to open it, leave it until 12 hours.

After 12 hours of waiting we will find two layers at the bottom which is slightly solid and at the top the liquid part.At these stage, we need to separate the liquid part from the slightly solid part, and we will use the method called Decantation i.e. pouring out the liquid part and remain with the solid portion. Then have another bowl with water, and add the dough to the water. This make the dough to be thin. We need to make the dough thin to make injera.

Once again, we need another bowl with a boiled water. Then take some portion of dough from the bowl we have in step 6 and add it on the bowl with the boiled water. Mix the dough with the boiled water and this mixture is called absite. The boiled absite will be mixed with the rest mass of dough, to make it thin and ready for baking injera.

Give power to the baking pan (electricity powered pan or wood fuel powered pan in the country side).Now, you will apply a Race seeds on your pan. The Race seeds are not that much important but if you are going to apply them on your pan; it will make the baking of injera very smooth and when you finally pull out your baked injera it will make it not to be sticky to the pan.

Finally, pitch the liquid dough and round it through the pan in a circular fashion. Then cover the pan with the lid or anything that will make you able to cover the pan, and wait for 2 minutes. But make sure your cover must hold the moisture inside the pan otherwise our injera will crack and the result will be deformed injera.

After 2 minutes open the lid or cover, don’t get your face too much close to the pan because the steam that will get out of the pan when it is open is very hot so it may hurt your face. So, my suggestion is open the pan and give it from 1-2 minutes until it cools down.

At this point, pull out the baked injera by using utensil from your pan. Be careful when you pull out it because injera is very thin and smooth you may break it and lose the circle shape.

Finally, enjoy eating your injera. I recommended eating injera with Ethiopian food and foods like Spaghetti or Macaroni but if you find any other food that is compatible please share it on the comment page.