Injera, flat bread from Ethiopia
Injera is not only food, but it also doubles as serving dish and eating utensils. For meals, a large round injera would be laid on the table and the hot food piled on top. Ethiopians would wrap a piece of bread around the hot food and tear it off, eating bread and food together, nothing else required. Lining your plate or serving tray with injera will save you some washing up on your Ethiopian day!
Injera recipe
Injera bread is made from three simple ingredients: teff flour, water, and salt. If you are familiar with making crepes or pancakes, you should not have any trouble to prepare it. You can use a mixture of teff flour and whole wheat or all purpose flour. Injera is usually served with hot food on top. Wrap the injera around the food, chop it off, and eat it.
Ingredients
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Procedure
- Sift wheat flour and salt in a medium bowl. Add teff flour and mix together with a wooden spoon. Add the water very slowly, stirring to avoid creating lumps.
- Heat up a non-stick skillet, crepe pan or cast iron skillet. Spray with vegetable cooking oil. The pan is hot enough when a drop of water thrown on the surface skids around before evaporating.
- Pour about one-fifth of the batter onto the pan in a thin stream. Use the crepe technique and start from the outside of the pan, spiraling around to the center.
- Cook the flat bread until holes appear on the surface and the surface is dry -it will take about 2 minutes. Use a spatula to remove bread from the pan and let it cool down.
- Repeat until you have finished with the batter.
If it does not cook properly
- Injera is delicate, you might try turn it and cook 30 seconds on the other side -as you would crepes- but this will only work with the smaller sizes.
- Another trick is to use an oven-safe pan. Preheat the oven to 325° F (160° C) before cooking your injera, then cook until bubbles form and place the pan into the oven for 2-3 minutes until the surface is dry. Then take it out of the oven, remove from the pan and cool down.
Servings: 5
Nutrition factsServing size: 1 serving
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Details will be included when we get the full nutritional analysis for teff flour. |
Cooking Tips
- Serve this flat bread with one of the Ethiopian stews on top.
- Injera bread should be thicker than crepes but not as thick as a pancakes.
- Try other flour mixes. Using half whole wheat flour and half cookie mix, for instance, should also work. Consider than in Ethiopia, injera would be prepared entirely with teff flour.
- An electric non-stick pan heats and cooks evenly, making easier to cook and remove the injera from the pan.
- Teff is a very important grain grown in Ethiopia. It is very high in fiber, iron, and calcium but with virtually no gluten. If you have teff grains but no flour, grind the grains in a coffee grinder or with mortar and pestle to make teff flour. Experiment with substituting a little flour in your baking with teff flour.
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