Well, just five days ago I tried to start another starter from scratch, this time with gluten free white flour from Dove Farms.  Well, in just four or five days, I found my container nearly overflowing when I arrived home tonight!  Witness:

The starter is overflowing the container slightly.

A closeup of the starter. You can see the bubbles of the healthy starter.

A day and a half ago, the container was only half full, but on it’s own, the active yeast cultures caused it to rise all on it’s own. I’m not sure if it was the gluten free flour, the slightly warmer temperatures we’ve been having this past week, or some combination thereof, but I’m very happy with this.  Also, I’ve read multiple places that once you have done some baking (although you don’t technically bake the injera) with yeast-gathering processes, it causes more yeast to be in the air, so that may have been it as well.

Remember, if you try this at home, be sure to not close the lid all the way, or else the starter might explode.

Ethiopian meals are centred around various stews served over injera bread.  The hardest part of this process was definitely the injera (see pictures below), as it involves a long process of waiting for a flour mixture to ferment.  Now, it’s possible to buy sourdough starters, but I didn’t really see any of these in the stores I went into, so I decided to just do it myself.  In comparison, the stews themselves took a lot of preparation, but as far as actual skill and patience required, they were, what my adviser would call “wee buns.”

I did a lot of internet research and ended up following the following process for making the injera bread:

1. Bought teff flour online from Tobia Teff.  Again, I scoured every likely place in Nottingham for teff flour and could not find any.  I think most of the African markets here may be Kenyan?
2. Followed Breadtopia’s video tutorial on how to make a sourdough starter from scratch using the ‘pineapple juice method’.  This was the longest part of the process.  It would have probably taken half the time if it wasn’t so cold in Nottingham at the moment.  One commenter from Australia said that, due to living near bread factories creating a lot of yeast in the air and the very warm climate, his starter became active within a day!  I started this in late December 2008 and it wasn’t until late January when I finally got a very active culture of teff flour starter.  I began by following the example using regular flour first, and then about five days later I began converting it to a teff flour starter. [By the way, from here on out, I am going to make another starter (and switch to that one only) using gluten-free flours.  I was cheap and used gluten-laden self-rising flour for the self-rising flour step documented in the next step.  One of our guests on the night we served it was alergic to gluten.]
3. For the actual making of the injera bread, I followed Heather’s Burakaeyae Step-by-step Injera Instructions.  Accompanying her very detailed blog post are youtube videos for each step, and after a few searches on youtube, one will see that she has, hands-down, the best instructional material for how to make injera for every step along the way (except the sourdough starter step which she assumes you have already done, see #2 above, although she has her own blog post on how to do this, but it would take even longer). Heather broke the creation down into 3 steps, each done about 8 hours apart.  Because it’s a bit chilly in Nottingham at the moment, though, the final 8-hour interval actually took two days for the injera starter/batter to become active (and actually, another day would have improved the sourness and ain [air bubble] count even more). Because super large frying pans do not really exist in any practical manner, and because they do not seem to sell this product here in the UK, I had to make injera into smaller-than-normal pieces.  Traditional pieces of injera are rather large and a single piece will fill a platter, but I had to make mine into large pancake sizes, which turned out just fine.  At times the edges got a bit crispy, so I ended up cutting those off with a pizza cutter!

Preparing the injera: rolling up a cooled piece while others are still cooling off

All of the prepared injera: two dishes for the injera servings and the main serving platter, ready for the Ethiopian stews. If we had a real mitad, I wouldn't have to layer the small pieces around the platter because a single piece would have been big enough for the entire thing! (In the background you can see a jar of messy brown stuff: that's my remaining teff starter.)

For the actual Ethiopian stews, we followed these recipes:

• Yemiser W’et (spicy brown lentils)
• Atar Allecha (spiced yellow split spea pureé)
• Gomen (collard greens)
• Salad (um, nothing fancy here, move along!)
• Berbere, a spice base (not pictured per se)
• Niter Kebbeh, a spiced oil base (not pictured)

Here is the final display of everything!

The final display! Salad (in the centre), Yemiser W'et (brown spicy lentils), Gomen (Collard greens), and Atar Allecha (spiced yellow split spea pureé). The multiple pieces of injera become less noticable when the stews are served on the platter.

It was absolutely delicious (and vegan!).  In the end, all of the injera was eaten, including the one lining the serving platter, as is tradition. I must say, that even though veggie burritos from Santana’s and Cotijas in San Diego are probably my favourite food item, Ethiopian is probably my favourite meal for its flavours and the experience.

If anybody has any tips on where to find teff flour in Nottingham (or nearby) so that I don’t have to order it, that would save quite a few quid in the future.  Or, if you live in San Diego or the Bay Area where we know Ethiopian restaurants exist, and you would like to visit us soon, we’ll reimburse you if you bring us some teff!

Ingredients

• One Soyrizo link (a package comes with two)
• Two Tofurky Gourmet Sausages, sliced (beer brats, italian sausages, or kielbasa — I used beer brats)
• Half to full block of fried Tofu in your favorite cajun-y marinade (this pre-made one that you can find in any Albertsons rocks)
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 cup, canned stewed tomatoes (cans of these usually come in 14 oz. or so, which is almost 2 cups, but it’s fine to use the whole can)
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• Salt to taste
• Fresh ground pepper to taste
• 4 potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 2 cans black-eyed peas
• 6 cups collard greens, cleaned and chopped
• Louisiana hot sauce to taste

Preparation:

In a soup pot, add the chopped onions, garlic and spices to the vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, add the tomatoes and crush with your hands. Then add the soy products, salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for a couple minutes. Then add the potatoes, black-eyed peas and greens.

Simmer for 30 minutes, covered. Stir every 5 minutes or so. Season with hot sauce and serve with cornbread and let the flavor pwn you. Serves like 8 or more. Great for leftovers, too.