This week seemed to follow the pattern of my 20 time bread baking experience. The pattern: failure then success, failure then success. After flying high from my challah bread of last week I quickly came crashing down when I attempted to make injera, an Ethiopian flat bread. If you have been following my 20 time blog religiously you know that I had originally planned Himbasha, an Ethiopian round yeast bread, my third week of learning. However, I was not happy with any of the recipe I found during week three so I rearranged my baking schedule. As time grew nearer for this bread to be made I was still unable to find a recipe that I liked. Additionally, each time I told someone I was going to make an Ethiopian bread they replied with, "Oooh are you going to make that delicious flat bread?!", to which I would always respond, "No". After hearing this multiple times and my inability to find a receipt I decided to change to injera. As I began my research I glanced at the ingredients I needed:
After going to two stores and calling four others I called off the search for teff flour. The only place I would find it was of course Amazon. Unfortunately I had not planned far enough ahead to order teff flour from Amazon so I was in search for an alternative solution. I found a different recipe that allowed the substation for all regular flour. This recipe was a bit different with the ratio of flour to water which yielded a cloudy water that I was supposed to let sit ad ferment for three days. So I did... My cloudy mixture turned into a separated bowl of water and somewhat mixed flour and water. I remixed it and allowed it to sit for two more days. When the time can I opened the sealed bowl was greeted by a very unpleasant order. I am extremely terrified of food poisoning and really any other stomach malady. it was because of this that I decided I would cook the injera but not eat it. To be fair injera is intended to be a fermented bread similar to sourdough bread starter. To add to my already failing bread the alternative recipe I used because of the lack of teff flour was extremely thin. Once it hit the pan it quickly turned into something that resembled the thin burnt part of a pancake that breaks because of its brittleness. All and all this was a very interesting learning experience. I saw the lack of diversity in markets and stores, leaning almost completely to eurocentric ingredients. I learned about the need for flexibility and alternative paths to completion. And once again I had to familiarize myself with failure in the learning process. |
Morgan Conroyfuture artisan bread baker thanks 20time. Archives
April 2016
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