Has anyone made Injera (Ethiopian Sourdough Flatbread)?

[artemis33]

I love the injera I have had at Ethiopian restaurants and decided to look for a recipe. I found this one that looks pretty authentic - fermenting the ground teff and not using short cuts like yeast or baking powder (which I found in other recipes).

I'm planning to try it out next time I get to the HFS to get some Teff flour but just wondered if anyone has already made this and has some tips? It is so good with lentils....mmmm...I hope it turns out good at home! If anyone has some ideas of what to make with it that would be great too

One more thing - do you think if I made a big batch I could freeze the leftovers like you would crepes? Would that ruin the health benefits of the fremented batter?

[dharmamama]

We have two kids from Ethiopia, so we make injera all the time. In fact, we are having alicha and injera for dinner tonight. Let me know how your recipe works out, because we have been unsuccessful in fermenting the batter. It always gets moldy when we try it. We do a faux injera that we found on the chickenchick.com site.

Our Ethiopian friends here in our city tell us that they just buy their injera from a restaurant because they can't successfully make it in America. They don't know why. They have speculated that it's a difference in the water (?) or the altitude.

They have, however, told us that refigerated (not frozen) injera will last for about 2-3 months.

Please let me know how your recipe works out!

Namaste!

[toraji]

Here is DH's recipe...we found that you have to precook part of the batter to make the injeras hold together.

Injera (Ethiopian Flat Bread)

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
2 cups teff flour
2 cups water

1/4 teaspoon yeast

Mix together the flour and 1 cup of the water and yeast in a mixing bowl until free of lumps, then add in the remaining water and mix well. Let ferment for 2-3 days or until very well soured. Adding yogurt culture at the begining will speed the souring along greatly and make for a cleaner taste. After your first batch you can keep a starter culture going and forgo adding the yeast and starter.

Once the batter has fermented fully, mix 1/2 cup of the batter with 2 cups of water and bring to a boil, whisking briskly until it thickens. Let cool then mix into the raw batter. The batter should be quite thin and runny, add water if necessary. Let rest for at least 15 minutes before cooking to let the batter rise.

To cook:
Heat a cast iron skillet over a medium heat. Coat the pan with about 1 teaspoon of oil. Pour 1/2 cup of batter into the skillet trying to coat it thinly and evenly. Cook covered for 2 - 4 minutes or until firm enough to pick up with a spatula. Oil the pan in between breads with a oiled cloth to keep breads from sticking.

Store the injeras in a towel to keep warm while the others are cooking.

[ComaWhite]

Originally Posted by toraji

Here is DH's recipe...we found that you have to precook part of the batter to make the injeras hold together.

Im not trying to be controversial, but I tried this recipe twice and both times it didnt work out at all. It was very slimy and wouldnt cook up right, or bubble at all after the cooked portion was added back into the bowl. ??

I also personally couldnt stand any recipe I tried using yeast. It tasted way too much like, well, yeast and not enough like sourdough.
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Funny you posted this thread, I was just thinking of starting one this morning. Ever since we started eating at a local etopian restaurant I have been obsessed with getting the recipes down. I have been experimenting with various injera recipes for the past 2 months and have tried EVERY recipe on the internet I have come across (almost 2 dozen) Most are nasty and wont even cook up. I have wasted sooo much flour its sinful, but eventually I came up with my own recipe that does work. Its not TRUE injera in that I dont only use teff flour. I have tried the recipe with 100% teff (It works that way too!) and we didnt care for it because teff is REALLY REALLY gritty and it feels like youre just eating sand. Its also had a very powerful flavor which I enjoyed but dh and dd did not. So I chose to use other flours in the mix too, Im sure you could subsitute and come up with a combination that you enjoy, just make sure to stick with 1C flour to 1C water. Oh and masa didnt work very well, it made thick slimy batter....

So....

1 C kamut flour
1/2 C teff flour
1/2 C whole wheat flour
2 C water.

Combine, whisk and leave it on your counter. Because its warm here right now, within about 36 hours I have a bubbling brew. Give it a good stir once its bubbling like crazy and then it will "rise" back up in the bowl about 3-4 hours later. Its is absolutly imperative that you use the batter at the peak of the bubbling. If it looks good, then GET COOKING! Once its past the peak bubbly stage, it wont make good injera and some of mine wouldnt cook up at all.
Heat up a cast iron or non-stick pan on med. heat (Youll really have to experiment with the temperatures so that you dont burn the injera but also so that it cooks properly)
I have found that you have to brush the pan (I use a papertowel) with oil (I use coconut oil mixed with ghee) between each injera or it will stick.

Right before you are ready to start give the batter another quick stir. I take my 1/4 C measuring cup and dip it in the batter, filling it about 2/3 full. I pour slowly onto the hot oiled pan making a circle outwards. (If you just dump the batter on it will be too thick) You can make them any size you want really, I just find it easier to handle and cook a smaller size.
You will see bubbles start to break the surface and then you will see the top on the injera start to dry. Drag a knife gently across the middle to see if its set- If its firm its done, if it sticks or pulls wait a bit more. It usually takes about 3 minutes to cook one. Slide the knife under the edge and pop the injera into a towel. Its its too brown, turn down your heat, if its not cooking properly turn it up. If the top isnt setting properly you can also try putting a pot lid on top of the injera for a minute to steam it (I found I had to do that on days when it was 85 and humid), but dont leave it on any longer than that or it will ruin it.

Oil the pan again and begin another. Stack them one on top of another in the towel until you are ready to eat. (I think this is an essential step because they continue cooking a bit in the towel and the tops seem to set better when you set a new hot one on top of the stack) I have found that they will stay good wrapped in the towel until the next day for leftovers.

I hope this makes sense. I tried to make it as detailed as possible because my stubborn relentless side would NOT let me give up until I made good injera. I seriously experimented for almost 2 months and did a lot of pregnant hormonal crying over my failures and wasting flour. :

ETA: I tried oiling the pan this last time with the Niter Kebbeh (Spiced Clarified Butter) and brushing a bit on the injeras before serving and it was really really yummy

[ComaWhite]

I would love love love it if someone would post a recipe in which it makes the spongy light-colored injera that they serve at the restaurants

My recipe is ok, but it doesnt compare to their sour-y goodness.

toraji; I was just reading a bit about teff flour this afternoon and it turns out that there are different kinds, regular and ivory. Are you using the ivory teff? The teff flour that I picked up is dark brown like cocoa and very gritty, although I can totally see making a much nicer injera and better results with the ivory flour.

[toraji]

Originally Posted by andrea

Im not trying to be controversial, but I tried this recipe twice and both times it didnt work out at all. It was very slimy and wouldnt cook up right, or bubble at all after the cooked portion was added back into the bowl. ??

I also personally couldnt stand any recipe I tried using yeast. It tasted way too much like, well, yeast and not enough like sourdough.

That's odd, adding back the cooked dough was the only way we could get it to work with 100% teff. We got the tip from a book all about world flatbreads (I think), though we got it from the library and I don't remember what it's called now.

Yeast is funny, depending on what kind you have and the temperature of your house, it will change the flavor and activity. We had to experiment a lot. I think slimy usually means that a certain strain of bacteria has gotten a hold of your ferment. Different houses have different kinds of ambient bacteria. In my old house, we made all sorts of ferments with no problems. The house I live in right now is terrible for fermenting....even saurkraut in this house goes off, much to my dismay.

I don't remember what kind of teff we had, we bought a big bag of it from the ethiopian grocery. But to be honest, it has been quite some time since we had any teff in the house so I don't recall exactly what the flour was like. It seemed fairly gritty, and a pale brown color. But when we cooked it it became a lot darker in color.

When we asked the woman at the Ethiopian restaaurant how she made her injera, she said she used self-rising flour along with her teff flour. So it wasn't all teff. I think that is how she got such a fine-textured injera.

[queenofhercastle]

I would love make injera but I don't know where to find the flour! I wore myself out a few years ago trying to find an Ethiopian store around here but I couldn't so I gave up on it.

Jennifer