The Horn · Volume 10, The Highland Ferment
Injera / taita
Ethiopia and Eritrea, the highland plateau
Illustration
- Time
- 40 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 149 sources in the brief
A fermented teff batter baked on one side only, 50 to 60 cm across and 6 to 7 mm thick, whose two faces do completely different jobs. The underside, against the plate, sets smooth, matte and closed: that is the face that soaks up the wat without disintegrating. The top, under the lid, sets as an open lattice of gas channels: that is the face that grips and carries. A bread open on both sides falls apart; a bread closed on both sides slides. The asymmetry is the design. Structurally it is a sourdough, carrying Candida humilis and C. milleri, the yeasts of San Francisco-style wheat sourdough, run hotter and wetter on a grain with no gluten.
As tradition built it
Makes 6 to 8. Four days, of which about 40 minutes is work.
Ingredients
- 1 kg wholegrain teff flour, brown or white
- 1.6 L water at about 25°C, left to stand overnight
- 160 g ersho (16 per cent by flour weight)
- as needed rapeseed oil, for the plate
Method
- Mix the wholegrain teff flour, the water at about 25°C and the ersho (16 per cent by flour weight) in a vessel of 4 to 5 litres, cover loosely, and hold at 20 to 24°C for 48 to 72 hours. The batter should pour in a thin ribbon, roughly single cream.
- Read doneness physically, not from the clock. Gas formation declines for about the first 31 hours and volume rises for about 48. Wait for gas evolution to slow and for the dough and part of the liquid phase to separate visibly.
- Pour off the yellow liquid on top and keep it. It is both next week's ersho and this batch's excess acid; left in, it gives sour, slack, tearing injera. This is the step almost everyone abroad gets wrong.
- Make the absit. Take 10 per cent of the batter by weight, whisk it into three times its weight of water, boil, stirring, about 10 minutes to a smooth gelatinised paste, cool to 46°C on a probe, and stir it back in.
- Rest 2 hours. The batter will lift and loosen.
- Bring the plate to 235°C, wipe it with the thinnest film of rapeseed oil, and pour about two thirds of a litre in a continuous spiral from the outer edge inward, no gaps, no hesitation. The jug is a mazoria, and hesitation gives a thick centre and thin edges.
- Cover with a domed lid and bake 3 minutes. Do not flip it.
- Cool flat on a cloth, never stacked hot, then store in a covered basket. Three days maximum, and never in the fridge, because refrigeration accelerates the starch retrogradation that turns it stiff and leathery.
Notes
You will need an ersho, which is on the ferment bench in Part Four.
What a modern chef changes
The eye count as the target, the ferment held at a temperature, and the two faces respected
Rungs 1, 2 and 6
Method
- Hold 25°C for 64 hours and stop guessing. An oven with the light on runs at 28 to 30°C in most ovens, which pushes the ferment yeast-forward. Rung 2: measure the box before you trust it.
- Weigh the absit at 8 per cent and take its temperature. Eight per cent was the study optimum, and 46°C is not approximate: hotter kills the yeast you just fed, cooler leaves a paste too stiff to disperse. Rung 1.
- Count the eyes and keep a note. Sixteen per square centimetre is the target; under ten means the absit was wrong or the secondary rest was short. That is what lets you fix next week's batch.
- Bake two ways deliberately. 235°C for 3 minutes for a supple sheet to eat off, and a second injera cut into rounds and dried at 60°C for 4 hours into dirkosh, then fried. Rung 6: crunch without putting anything crisp on a 60 per cent moisture sponge.