Injera Period COrigin theory CVerified

Injera is a staple made by naturally fermenting teff, an indigenous grain of the Ethiopian highlands, and baking it thin on a dedicated iron griddle called a mitad. Shared around the family table, it has been eaten widely across every rank of society.

Teff, its foundation, is an ancient grain rooted in the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea, brought under cultivation somewhere between the fourth and first millennia BC. At the Mezber site in the Tigray region, microscopic plant remains (phytoliths and starch grains) together with traces of large seeds point to cultivation around 3,500 years ago, that is, around 1600 BC. By the first millennium BC teff had crossed the Red Sea as far as Hajar bin Humeid in Yemen. That the grain's foundation reaches far back is well established by the study of agricultural history.

The antiquity of the grain, however, must be kept apart as a separate question from when injera as a fermented flatbread came into being. That teff's history as a grain reaches back to around 1600 BC and when today's fermented injera took its form are not answered by the same sources. The grain may be ancient, but when the method of fermenting it with wild yeast and baking it thin on a dedicated griddle came together is a different matter.

The origins of injera carry a piece of lore that reaches back 'to around 100 BC.' In speaking of Ethiopia's staple, this antiquity has often been invoked.

Trace the number, though, and it leads back to a 1962 account by Stewart and Getachew, where the authors themselves note that it 'cannot be confirmed from the historical record.' No other contemporary record supports the tale. To be pulled along by the antiquity of the underlying grain and declare the fermented bread just as old would make it a rootless invention.

What is clear is the antiquity of the grain. The plant remains at Mezber and the teff carried across the Red Sea as far as Yemen both show that this grain stood in the life of the highlands from a very early age. Charred teff grains dated to the mid-to-late fourth century have also been recovered from the Ona Nagast site at Aksum.

By contrast, the clues pointing to the fermented flatbread itself are thin. A clay object resembling the dedicated mitad griddle has been recovered from an Aksum site, dated to around the fifth or sixth century. It hints that injera may have been baked there, but neither the grain used nor how it was handled can be pinned down. What is more, research that has traced bread-baking in the highlands on the ground finds that this kind of griddle was used to roast wheat, barley, and sorghum, not teff or finger millet. The presence of a griddle cannot simply be read as evidence of injera.

The foundation of teff as a grain is indeed very old. Yet the record that would fix when the style of fermented injera itself came together has not yet been found.