Injera

• 1. Introduction

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  Injera, also called taita, is a sour, spongy flatbread, and for some rural Ethiopians it supplies 90% of everything they eat. It is a staple across Ethiopia and Eritrea, and many Ethiopians make a fresh batch every day. Its main ingredient is a tiny grain that was long rare outside Ethiopia, and its batter waits for days before it ever meets heat. This documentary follows injera from grain to griddle to table. Why does a batter need so long to sour? What turns one flour into a sign of wealth and another into a budget substitute? And how did a bread from Ethiopia and Eritrea end up being baked and farmed in the United States?

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• 2. Teff and Its Rivals

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  Teff seeds are sorted by colour into three grades: nech for white, quey for red, and sergegna for a mixture. Each grade makes its own kind of injera. Teff is a cereal crop that originated in Ethiopia, and its primary use is injera. Cooks favour it for its colour, its flavour and its long shelf life. Before it reaches the dough, the grain is sifted and milled into fine flour.

  Barley, finger millet, sorghum, wheat, maize and rice all turn up in injera, with or without teff mixed in. In the lowlands, sorghum is common, while in the highlands barley is more usual. Local and family tradition set the proportions, and so does money. Many of these grains are milled with disc mills.

  Because teff is expensive, an injera made of pure teff signals wealth. White-grained teff costs more than red-grained teff, so it signals higher status still. Households that blend flours choose by income. High- and middle-income Ethiopians prefer rice flour, because it gives a similar white colour. Lower-income households lean towards sorghum or maize. Commercial producers adjust their mixes as prices shift and as customers of different origins voice different preferences. Rice is also attractive to them because it is cheaper and more common than teff. A nationwide survey of retailers found that flour mixing grew between 1991 and 2001.

  Among the Ethiopian diaspora, injera is made from rice flour or from a mix of rice and wheat flour. Coriander and fenugreek are sometimes stirred into the batter for flavour. Chickpeas, fava beans or lentils can be added to teff injera to raise its protein.

  In Ethiopia, about 80% of the sorghum crop goes into injera, and that demand makes sorghum dearer than wheat, the reverse of most of the world.

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• 3. The Long Ferment

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  A clear yellow liquid called ersho carries the memory of every earlier batch. It gathers on the surface of fermenting teff batter, and cooks collect it as a starter. About 96% of it is water, and the rest holds nutrients and microbes. The amount used may be around 16% of the flour. Fermentation would still begin without it, simply from flour touching water.

  Kneading comes first, usually by hand, in a container called a bohaka. The ratio of flour to water runs from equal parts to two-thirds, which produces a watery dough. Commercial yeast works faster, but it gives a poorer flavour and texture, so cooks use it less often.

  Primary fermentation lasts anywhere from 24-72 hours. The time depends on the microbes present, the amount of ersho, the altitude, the temperature, the type of container and even cleanliness. Gas production slows over about 31 hours, while the dough keeps swelling for about 48. The first 18-24 hours bring the fastest expansion. After 30-33 hours a yellow liquid rises to the top, and cooks discard it. Acidity climbs until the pH falls below 5.8.

  At least 68 species of yeast and 107 species of lactic acid bacteria have been identified in injera. The yeasts include Saccharomyces, Pichia and Candida. The bacteria include Lactobacillus, Lactococcus, Leuconostoc, Pediococcus and Streptococcus. Over 48 hours their numbers rise thousandfold, and that growth gives injera its sour taste.

  The length of the ferment before the next step decides which kind of injera results. The most popular kind rests for a moderate time and comes out smooth and thin. A shorter ferment of 12-24 hours gives a thick, sweet injera that is dark red on the bottom. Amharic and Oromo speakers call it aflegna, and Tigrinya speakers call it bekuo. The Oromo flatbread cumboo is made from the same dough. In rural areas aflegna is common, while in cities it is mainly made to save time.

  Let the dough sit longer and lactic acid bacteria multiply, producing komtata injera, which is very sour and considered less nutritious. Oromo speakers call it qomxoxaa caabitaa. Cooks sometimes add more flour and water after the ferment. Most Ethiopians do not prefer it, and it is often made by less experienced cooks.

  In most versions, the cook next takes a portion of the dough, about 10% of it, and boils it.

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• 4. Absit and the Mitad

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  That boiled portion is called absit, a pregelatinized starch that works as a dough binder. It is mixed with roughly three times as much water, though cooks vary the amount. Once it cools to about 46 degrees Celsius, it goes back into the main dough.

  A secondary fermentation of 30-120 minutes follows. Gas bubbles form and the dough turns puffy. At the end, some dough is saved to make ersho for the next batch, and the residue stays in the container.

  Absit shapes the final bread more than its small share suggests. It helps produce a smooth texture with the bubbles known as eyes. Injera made without it is soft and thin and has no eyes. With sorghum the step is necessary, because it raises the batter to the viscosity of teff dough and gives uniform eyes.

  Water is then added to thin the dough into a batter, which is poured onto a mitad. This is a large, smooth, circular griddle. The mitad is heated to 90-95 degrees Celsius, since a cooler surface makes the dough stick. It is greased, often with canola oil or animal fat. About two-thirds of a litre of batter is poured in a spiral from the outside inwards.

  A lid goes on for 2-4 minutes, depending on thickness, temperature and the amount of steam. Under the lid, steam leavens the bread. The steam also increases starch gelatinization, which creates the visible bubbles. The injera is never flipped, so the bottom stays smooth while the top is pocked with eyes.

  Mitads are made of clay. Metal is not typically used because it does not allow adequate temperature control. The most common type is electric, with an aluminium lid joined by a hinge to the clay griddle. Factories pour batter onto a rotating heating element and carry the cooked rounds away on a conveyor belt to cool.

  Each finished round measures about 50-60 cm across and only 6-7 mm thick.

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• 5. The Edible Tablecloth

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  Two or three people may share a single injera. A typical shared meal in Ethiopian cuisine, including Tigrayan cuisine, starts with a stack of injera topped with vegetable or meat dishes. The bread serves as both serving platter and utensil.

  Wat, a stew of meat and vegetables, is the most common partner. Doro wat is made with chicken, and shiro is made of pulses without meat. Meat and boiled vegetables also appear on the stack. Diners tear off small pieces with the hand, traditionally only the right one, and use them to grasp stews and salads. The eyes help, because the stews soak into them.

  The bottom layer drinks in the juices and flavours of everything above it. When the meal ends, this tablecloth of injera is eaten too. Among the Amhara, injera holds the place that bread or rice holds elsewhere.

  Between meals, injera is kept in a mesob, a cylindrical straw basket, sometimes with a plastic cover. For longer storage, cooks dry it into dirkosh, which keeps up to a year in a dry place and can be rehydrated.

  Dried injera also becomes fit-fit, a dish of dried bread served in tomato sauce.

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• 6. Soft, Sour, Short-Lived

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  About 59.8% of injera is water. The ideal round is soft and pliable enough to wrap around other foods, thin, and pleasantly sour. Because the process is lengthy and artisanal, quality varies widely, and qualities such as texture and bubbliness cannot be measured objectively. Differences in microbial content can change the flavour.

  Teff absorbs more water than grains such as sorghum, thanks to its very small starch granules. That makes teff injera more flexible and better at staying soft. The prolamin proteins in teff are also hydrophobic and polymerize very little. Rice flour makes a similar injera because its starch granules match teff in type and size, but rice injera goes stale after one day. Maize injera is sticky and also stales after a day.

  Mold ends an injera's life after about 3 days. In extreme circumstances, moldy injera is sun-dried and eaten. Chemical preservatives may stretch the shelf life to 12 days. Injera from white teff keeps longer than injera from dark teff.

  Injera is low in protein, because its nutrition comes entirely from grains. The fiber of the grains and the fermentation make it high in prebiotics and probiotics. Fermentation breaks down phytic acid, which raises the mineral value of teff, already high in minerals including iron. Frequent consumption of teff injera is associated with low rates of anemia.

  Cooking destroys more than half of the vitamin folate, but fermentation improves its retention. Teff injera has a high glycemic index, and it is high in antinutrients such as tannins. The yellow liquid discarded during fermentation holds minerals, sugars, amino acids and riboflavin, so throwing it away lowers the nutritional value.

  Studies suggest that blending in other grains need not spoil the bread. Teff mixed with sorghum has better sensory qualities than sorghum alone, and extra grains may give results comparable to pure teff injera. Some grains may even improve nutrition, and wheat added to teff may do so because it breaks down more phytic acid.

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• 7. Origins and Migration

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  Teff has been cultivated since the 4th millennium BC, yet nobody knows when injera began. According to botanists Robert B. Stewart and Asnake Getachew, folklore places its origin around 100 BC, though the historical record cannot confirm that. They speculate that someone left flour with moisture for a few days and discovered a pleasant bread.

  Archaeologist Richard Wilding proposed that the presence of griddles may point to the presence of teff and injera. Mitads have been found at archaeological sites dating back as far as 600 AD, possible evidence for injera and for shiro.

  Lahoh is a similar bread, but thicker, with sorghum as its main ingredient. Kisra is thinner than injera and cooked uncovered. Both puff up through fermentation. Their likeness to injera suggests a family tie, though food scholar Hamid A. Dihar believes they are not related. Kitcha is another Ethiopian flatbread made of teff, but it is unfermented and thicker. Injera itself may be called a pancake-like flatbread, a fermented pancake in the manner of the English crumpet, which also has air bubbles.

  Inside Ethiopia, the share of food spending that went to injera rose from 0.8% in 1996 and 2000 to 4.7% in 2011, as demand for convenience food grew. Injera was still less common in rural areas. In Addis Ababa, injera makes up 20% of teff sales, a share that barely changes over time. About 90% of these sales are through retailers. Some are baltena shops, which sell various flour products from fixed locations, and others are small itinerant sellers known as gulit. Wholesalers, mostly informal and occasionally branded companies, also supply it.

  The famine of the 1980s cut Ethiopian teff production, and Ethiopian restaurants in the United States switched to other grains. At the time, teff was rarely grown outside Ethiopia. Around the 1990s, farmer Wayne Carlson of Caldwell, Idaho founded The Teff Company, one of the first in the country to produce teff at large scale. That made teff injera possible in the United States.

  A spike in Ethiopian immigration in the 1980s and 1990s, largely because of the Refugee Act passed in 1980, made injera more common there. Tedla Desta, an Ethiopian-American immigrant, pioneered its mass production and opened the first injera bakery, in Alexandria, Virginia. He introduced the seed to Johnston Seed Co. in Enid, Oklahoma, which became his first supplier. Several American companies now produce teff flour, and injera is often cooked on an aluminum lefse grill.

  Similar breads exist in Sudan, Chad and Kenya, where the Borana and Gabra of the north eat a variant. In Israel, injera is growing in popularity because of immigration by Ethiopian Jews. Elsewhere, it turns up in grocery stores and restaurants specializing in Ethiopian cooking, particularly in major cities.

  Exports of injera were worth US$10 million in 2015, and North America was the largest market. The rise may owe something to more airplane connections.

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• 8. Injera and Ritual Life

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  A picture of a mesob appears on the 10 birr banknote, and injera is seen as a national dish of Ethiopia. Religious and national holidays, weddings and birthdays typically feature it. At funerals, participants from outside the family carry mesobs full of injera. At graduation parties, guests bring injera along with drinks such as tella and areqe. Farmers also share injera with one another to express gratitude for help with the farm work.

  On Ethiopian Orthodox fast days, believers abstain from animal products, and injera is often served in a mesob beside wot, shiro, vegetable dishes and pasta. Orthodox churchgoers offer injera for the priest to eat after the service. In the city of Bahir Dar, some Orthodox families wrap injera around babies after their baptisms to bring good fortune.

  In some parts of the Amhara Region, dreaming about injera is read as a sign of good luck. Among the Amhara around Bahir Dar, people believe that a woman who makes good injera manages a household well. They also believe that a woman whose injera has good eyes is as hard-working as a honeybee.

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