Yesterday, the bread faeries did not give me their blessings.

While the Challah bread came out looking gorgeous, it also came out way bland! The two possible reasons I could come up with are:

1) Old bread flour; and/or

2) Too much yeast.

I had used a recipe out of Sherry Yards' "Secrets of Baking" (I think that's the name of it, anyway, without going into the other room to verify it.)

INJERA BREAD:  And the Injera dough did rise, but it was VERY dark. There was no way around that. Soooo, what I'm thinking is that, while using 100% Teff flour may be the 'authentic' way they make it in Ethiopia, the yummy Injera bread at the restaurants in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego are made from another recipe. With or without Teff, I don't know; however, from those that I've had at the restaurants were generally much lighter in color which is a dead giveaway that they're using some other flour(s). The best I've been able to make at home has been the buckwheat flour with seltzer water recipe. They held up well during cooking and tasted very acceptable as an accompaniment to Doro'Wat.

Hello and welcome to my Blog!

After deciding to make some bread today, I discovered this site while googling recipes for yeast/starters.

As my baby, Tyler, and I are both coming down with a cold, I planned to stay at home today and what better thing to do than make bread! Well, two more reasons for this; first, I'm making some Ethiopian Doro'Wat for dinner so am making some 'authentic' Injera Bread to go with it.. from Teff flour and water. Second, I wanted to make some bread for myself as the cost of the [bad] bread in my area is now too high for our small household budget. So, hazzah!... Challah bread it is. :-)  I just remembered how nice the Challah bread from Wholefoods in La Jolla, CA, is; they sell some organic baked-same-day bread from a baker out there and woooh! Yummy! How hard could it be?

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Challah bread came out looking beautiful! However, the taste was bland. :-P  The only place I skimped was using old bread flour. Will try again. Meanwhile, the Injera dough is still sitting, waiting for the Doro'Wat to be done which will be in about 40 minutes. At that time, I'll add salt to the dough to stop the yeast, then make them on the griddle. Stay tuned!..

I was making my wife some special pancakes this morning that are gluten free - egg free and dairy free (she is allergic to all) and the recipe I am always using and tweeking got much better. I usually have to use soy or rice milk in place of dairy milk, but this time I tried canned coconut milk. This worked really well and I also thinned the recipe and made a very nice injera type flat bread at the end. I wanted to share it with anybody that might want to try it, or give suggestions. I do add fruit sometimes, but am always working on getting the consistancy and flavor best before masking it with those additions. I usually make the following double batch so that she can have some ready made for later in the week.

3 cups buckwheat flour

2 cups coconut milk

2 tsp baking soda

3 tsp baking powder

3 tsp sugar

1 tsp xanthan gum

4 flax egg substitutes (each = 1 tablespoon flax meal mixed with 3 tablespoons boiling water, let sit for a few minutes till gooey)

6 tablespoons vegetable oil

enough water for runny pancake batter

ladle a scoop of batter onto medium hot lightly greased skillet.  When the batter stopps bubbling but is still steaming, flip

yum

For a nice injera type flat bread or roll up, add more water to the batter so that it can spread out nice and thin. Cook on one side until the top is dry to touch. Don't flip, injera only gets cooked on one side, this leaves the other side flexible for rolling. There will be alot of bubble holes and be nice and soft inside.

Russ from RI

Hey,

I've been trying to make Injera bread. I bought Teff flour from Bob's Red Mill. I followed the instructions on the Bob's Red Mill site, which are...

Ingredients:

1 cup Teff (Tef, T'ef) Flour 

1-1/2 cups Warm Water