Ambasha

The celebration bread of the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands, a wheel of enriched wheat dough scored into a spoked pattern and scented with cardamom, fenugreek, and black cumin

Origin: Aksum and Tigray, Ethiopia

From the journey of Wheat.

Ambasha, himbasha in Tigrinya, is the bread brought out for something: a saint's day, a wedding, the end of a fast, a guest worth marking. It is baked as a single flat wheel and scored before baking into a spoked pattern radiating from the centre, so that it is torn apart along the lines rather than cut. The dough is enriched with oil and a little sugar and scented with ground cardamom and often abish, fenugreek, and black cumin. It belongs to a part of the world most people do not associate with wheat at all, and that is a misconception worth correcting. Ethiopia is the largest wheat producer in sub-Saharan Africa, and the highlands have grown it for well over two thousand years, the grain having crossed the Red Sea from South Arabia in the pre-Aksumite period along with a good deal else. What makes Ethiopian wheat genuinely important is not the tonnage but the diversity. The highlands are one of the world's great reservoirs of wheat genetic variation, retaining emmer landraces, aja, that have almost vanished elsewhere, alongside a wide range of durums. Vavilov identified the region as a centre of diversity for exactly this reason, and breeders still go there for material. Wheat sits alongside teff rather than replacing it. Injera, the sour fermented flatbread that is the foundation of the Ethiopian table, is teff at its best and is frequently stretched with other grains; ambasha is a different order of thing, a bread of occasion rather than of every meal.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 600 g strong white bread flour
  • 7 g instant dried yeast
  • 2 tsp fine salt
  • 60 g caster sugar
  • 320 ml warm water
  • 80 ml sunflower oil, or melted niter kibbeh

Spices

  • 1.5 tsp ground cardamom
  • 0.5 tsp ground fenugreek
  • 1 tsp black cumin seeds (nigella)
  • 0.25 tsp ground coriander seed

To finish

  • 2 tbsp oil, for brushing

Method

  1. Whisk the flour, yeast, salt, sugar, cardamom, fenugreek, coriander, and black cumin together in a large bowl.
  2. Add the warm water and the oil and bring together into a soft dough. Knead for eight to ten minutes until smooth.
  3. Cover and prove for one hour until well risen.
  4. Knock back and shape into a single tight ball, then press it out on a lined tray into a flat disc about 25 cm across and 2 cm thick.
  5. Prove for a further thirty minutes, then brush the surface with oil.
  6. Score the pattern with a sharp knife or a blade: press a shallow circle in the middle, then cut spokes radiating out from it to the edge, dividing the wheel into eight or twelve segments. Cut about 5 mm deep, not through.
  7. Bake at 190C (fan 170C, gas 5) for thirty to thirty-five minutes, until deep golden and hollow-sounding underneath.
  8. Cool on a rack and serve warm or at room temperature, torn apart along the scored lines.

Notes

Black cumin here is Nigella sativa, sold as black seed or kalonji, and not cumin at all. Ethiopian shops sell it as tikur azmud. Niter kibbeh is worth making or buying if you want the authentic version: clarified butter infused with cardamom, fenugreek, ginger, and korarima. Eritrean himbasha is essentially the same bread and the two names are used interchangeably across the border. For a vegan loaf use oil throughout, which is standard during the long Orthodox fasting periods when animal products are avoided.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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