Re: Injera Bread

Don Wiss wrote:

Are they 100% teff? To be authentic they should be. But sometimes in the US
they mix in wheat.


I got curious enough to google on "injera recipe." Sure enough, asking for THE recipe for injera is a little like asking for THE recipe for bread. There are zillions, and there's no way of saying which is the authentic one. For one thing, I'd heard that the leavening agent was seltzer, but let's guess that couldn't be right for a traditional pancake-like bread that's eons old. It turns out that one way to leaven it is to let the batter sour as with sour dough bread. There's also adding yeast. Also baking soda. I found recipes that call for oil and buttermilk. Not only are there recipes calling for wheat flour mixed with teff, there are recipes that use only wheat flour and no teff. Since wheat flour is considerably cheaper in the U.S., that's a no-brainer. I'm not surprised that an immigrant population would start using a less expensive substitute ingredient almost immediately.


--Lia

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