The lifeblood of ETHIOPIAN CUISINE
Injera, a spongy bread, has been filling stomachs for thousands of years
KARON LIU The sweet aroma of fermented dough is unmistakable as it wafts through the quiet laneway near the Danforth leading to a bakery with no sign or markings on the door.
Inside husband-and-wife Mike Woldetsadik and Nardos Teklegiorgis’ Kullubi are honouring a tradition that has been alive for thousands of years.
Injera, perhaps the most well-known food of Ethiopia, is a fluffy, wonderfully sour bread made from teff flour that’s as synonymous with Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine as the baguette is to the French.
It’s a simple batter that’s fermented, then cooked on a griddle, called a mitad, like a crepe. No rolling, kneading, shaping or slicing is necessary.
Injera starts with teff, a grass that grows in western Eritrea and Sudan and the highlands of Ethiopia, according to Mesob Across America: Ethiopian Food in the USA, a book on Ethiopian restaurants in America. Scholars believed that the people there may have cultivated teff more than 5,000 years ago and historical digs found early examples of mitads around 500 to 600 AD. Injera is a
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staple in Ethiopian households, served on large platters and topped with wat (meat and vegetable stews) or ripped into pieces to make a breakfast dish called fir-fir. “Every home knows how to make it, and we helped out as kids. Good injera is when you can see the eyes. The more, the better and spongier it is. Small eyes are perfect,” says Teklegiorgis, referring to the little air holes that dot the flatbread as an indicator of well-made injera. Teklegiorgis and her husband moved to Toronto from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, in 2003 and took over the injera-making business from a previous owner in 2007.
Every morning around 6 a.m., the couple fires up the gas-powered mitads. The fermented batter is ladled on to the mitad and cooked for two to three minutes before they’re lifted off to cool before being packaged.
Depending on the number of orders from local restaurants and grocery stores, the two make about 300 injera before Woldetsadik gets into his car to deliver the freshly made injera to restaurants and stores such as African Palace at Bloor St. W. and Ossington Ave., RendezVous at Danforth and Monarch Park Ave. and Ethiopian House at Yonge St. and Irwin Ave. Their injera is also sold at grocers such as Harar Grocery at Bloor St. W. and Lansdowne Ave., Ossington Mini Mart at Bloor St. W. and Ossington Ave., and Mister Greek Meat Market at Danforth and Jones Aves. For Christmas, they will make about 2,000 pieces of injera.
Enat Gulelat, owner of Enat Buna breakfast and lunch spot in Moss Park, has been getting her injera from Woldetsadik and Teklegiorgis for years.
Gulelat remembers helping her family make injera as a child in the eastern Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa. Back then, electricity wasn’t available in every household so the injera was cooked in a large pan over a wooden fire.
“As a child, we’d put sugar on it while it’s hot and we’d eat it. We made sure we behaved really well that day so that we’d be able to have it as a treat,” she says. “I’ve seen people that cannot go without injera for a day because they don’t feel full or satisfied without it.”
She explained that injera also happens to tick all the boxes of current western food trends. The bread is vegan since many Ethiopians abstain from consuming animal products as part of their Orthodox Christian faith. Those with celiac disease or are going gluten free would also have no problem with injera as long as it is made with pure teff.
Still, injera has seen a few variations as the Ethiopian diaspora expanded and dining habits changed over the years.
“There’s a difference between the injera here in North America and in Ethiopia,” says Harry Kloman, a journalism instructor at the University of Pittsburg who fell in love with Ethiopian food after having it for the first time in 2000 and since then started an Ethiopian food blog and wrote the aforementioned Mesob Across America.
“In Ethiopia, they make them larger, about15 to 20 inches in diameter. In America, it’s 12 to 15 inches. Second, it’s thinner and much tangier, the flavour is more prominent,” says Kloman. “What we’re eating in North America is diaspora injera. Decades and decades ago, restaurants had to improvise because they didn’t have teff or a mitad to cook the injera on. In the 70s when the first Ethiopian places in the states opened they used Bisquick and it became thicker.”
While traditionally injera is made only from teff flour, importing it is expensive, so it’s not uncommon for injera makers in North America to use a blend of flours. Woldetsadik and Teklegiorgis’s regular injera recipe is a mixture of teff, barley and wheat flours, but they will make pure teff injera for a small surcharge if a client requests it.
Gulelat gets a small batch of pure teff injera from Ethiopia three times a week, for which she pays a premium at $6 for just three pieces. She saves those for diners who request a gluten free meal. She agrees with Kloman that injera from Ethiopia tends to be larger, thinner and has a much more intense sour flavour than the locally made ones. There’s no official reason for the difference in taste, but Gulelat says the popular belief is that the water in Ethiopia is different and affects the fermentation process. Kullubi Food and Spice (unrelated to Woldetsadik and Teklegiorgis’ business) in Cabbagetown sells both local and Ethiopian-made injera.
How injera is served has also changed over the years, says professor James McCann of Boston University, who teaches African food history and is the author of Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine. Injera is usually served whole on a large platter and topped with wat as part of a communal dining experience as diners tear off a piece of injera and wat and sometimes, feed each other as a sign of endearment or hospitality, a practice called gorsha.
“If I go to a friend’s house in Addis Ababa, they’ll slice the injera into strips and roll it into bandages. I would call it an urban affectation, but now it’s now more common everywhere,” he said.
Gulelat also serves injera in small rolls at her restaurant, unless a diner asks for it in a platter format. For her, it’s a way to reduce food waste.
“There’s a lot of wastage at the end because the sauce can make the injera soggy and people may not eat the last bits,” she says. “So I put the wat on the plate and the injera on the side so they’ll eat more. Gorsha also isn’t as popular here. Over here, if someone touches your food you throw it away. Over there (in Ethiopia), there are no leftovers.”
Injera has seen a few other changes as cooks tried to put fusion spins on it, says McCann, though it hasn’t quite taken off on a larger level yet.
Famed Ethiopian-born and Swedish-raised chef Marcus Samuelsson has an injera recipe that adds yogurt and club soda to the batter to bypass the fermentation process.
McCann also tried an injera bread pudding topped with blueberries and ice cream at Chicago’s Ras Dashen restaurant. Gulelat played around with injera rolled with chocolate and bananas as a way to incorporate sweets into a cuisine that traditionally doesn’t have desserts.
But when asked if Teklegiorgis and Woldetsadik would ever consider experimenting with their injera, both quickly shook their heads.
“We never thought about it,” says Teklegiorgis. “We like tradition.”
“I’ve seen people that cannot go without injera for a day because they don’t feel full or satisfied without it.” ENAT GULELAT OWNER OF ENAT BUNA