injera

[groundhog]

Hello...

I've wanted to make injera from teff, using only teff as a starter.

Has anyone done this? I can't eat gluten grains, so starting with wheat, spelt, kamut, rye is out of the question.

I'm also interested in fermenting flatbreads with sorghum flour. I've heard of this being done in various places, but haven't really tried it yet, myself. Has anyone else done this?

I might give it a try one of these days!

[sdsunday]

I haven't tried that, but I bet it was done traditionally with just Teff in Africa. Let us know how it works out. Maybe I'll try too, you could add a little yogurt or something else with healthy LABs (cooties) to get the ball rolling in the right direction, but you'd think that with adequate attention ie. keep it fed and watered and at a reasonable temp, Teff flour should sour fine.
You have made me extremely hungry for Ethiopian food.

[BigEnergy]

Several years ago I made injera with teff and no other grain. I did a web search and found a recipe. If I remember right, I mixed teff with a little whey and some water, and let it sit for a few days, stirring a couple times day until it soured. The injera was a bit thin and pretty tangy, and it fell apart fairly easily. But you could still scoop up yummy Ethiopian food with it!

The last few weeks I've been making sourdough sorghum pancakes. I started with a regular wheat San Francisco sourdough starter. Every day I took out a half cup of the mother mix, and added a half cup of varying gluten free flours and a half cup of water. One day I used garfava, the next I used sorghum, the next teff, etc. After a couple of weeks of this I assumed there was no gluten left in the starter. I used Sandor's sourdough flapjack recipe. I pulled out some starter and mixed it with sorghum flour and water and let it stand on the counter overnight to ferment some more. I added eggs and kefir, etc. in the morning. The pancakes were a bit grainy, but good! And I didn't get any gluten reaction.

I'm going to make some teff pancakes using the sourdough starter in a couple of days, then will try some gluten-free flatbreads.

[ferment-nut]

It is not hard and starts greats. Make it a thin batter like for Pancakes it takes several days, you can find recipes on the net but some say to make it too thick. I tried making it with buck wheat flour and it came out good, different though.

[rubyg580]

I got this recipe a while ago from an African cooking web site. don't remember the exact place.

Injera Recipe:

1 1/2 cups ground teff
2 cups water
salt, to taste
vegetable oil, for the skillet

Mix the ground teff and water together in a bowl with salt to taste. Make sure there are no lumps. Put aside for one to three days to allow the dough to ferment. This is when the injera acquires its tangy, slightly sour taste.

Heat up a skillet, adding a little oil so the injera doesn't stick. The injera dough should be loose like a pancake or crepe batter. Pour some batter or dough on the hot skillet covering the entire cooking surface. The injera should be thicker than a crepe, but not as thick as a pancake.

Allow the injera to cook. Little bubbles will rise to the surface. Once the top in the injera is dry it's done. You only cook one side of this bread and you don't allow the injera to brown on the cooked side.

Substitutions and Additions:

You may substitute other flours such as rice flour, whole wheat flour, or corn meal for the teff flour. Some people use half self-rising flour and another flour.

Sometimes club soda is used instead of water. This gives the dough faster start in the fermentation process - sort of like a sour dough starter.

Yeast may also be added to the recipe to help the dough rise.

[vegmeg]

I find that buckwheat works really well for gluten-free injera... a buckwheat sourdough can be started by mixing buckwheat flour with some chlorine-free water, chucking in a few organic grapes, and then stirring it a couple of times a day until it gets sour (remove the grapes after a couple of days). Mmm mmm... the nice thing about buckwheat is that it grows locally in my area, so I prefer using it rather than importing teff.