Injera Is the Soul of Ethiopian Cuisine

With a swift flick of the wrist, Gennet Wondimu, owner of Ye Geny Injera & Mini Market in Inglewood, Calif., slipped a woven mat, called a sefed, under a freshly prepared injera and transferred it from the hot mitad, or griddle, to a long table to cool. Tiny holes covering the surface of the bread stared back invitingly.

“Aino k’onijo, ‘beautiful eyes,’ that’s what we call the injera eyes,” Ms. Wondimu said of the holes. “But sometimes the eyes are flat. That means the injera is no good.”

An assertively sour, spongy flatbread, injera is ubiquitous in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisines. Often, the nutrient-rich staple serves as plate and utensil. A variety of stews (such as alitcha kik, shiro, doro wat) and vegetable-based dishes (like tikel gomen) are eaten directly from the bread instead of a plate or bowl. The eyes soak up the sauces, while injera’s requisite tang balances the rich, bold flavors. The malleable texture of injera makes it easy to tear off a piece with one hand and scoop bites.

Necessity shaped Ms. Wondimu’s injera. After her husband’s death, she started a catering and injera business out of her home. Her son’s restrictive diet prompted her to use teff flour, which is traditional to the recipe and happens to be gluten-free, rather than the mix of teff and other grains, such as wheat, barley and buckwheat, that many in the diaspora use. Soon, demand grew, and, in 2018, she opened Ye Geny, where she sells injera made exclusively from teff flour and prepares it for various Ethiopian restaurants in the Los Angeles area.

Because injera can be challenging to make, the task is sometimes outsourced to people who do it especially well. Growing up, Genet Agonafer, chef and owner of Meals by Genet, a popular Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles, recalled how an “injera gagari,” as these experts are known, would regularly come to her home in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, and prepare stacks in advance, stored in a beautiful woven basket called a mesob.