Canjeero

the thin fermented sorghum pancake of the Horn, cooked on one side only so the surface stays open and lace-like

Origin: Djibouti City & the Somali Horn

From the journey of Sorghum.

Canjeero, also called lahoh, is the daily bread of Djibouti, Somalia, Somaliland, and Yemen, and it is a close cousin of Ethiopian injera without being the same thing. It is smaller, thinner, and softer, it is cooked on one side only so that the top stays porous and the underside smooth, and it is usually made from sorghum, or sorghum cut with wheat, rather than from teff. That distinction matters more than it looks. Teff grows in the Ethiopian highlands and very little else, whilst sorghum is the grain of the hot, dry, low country, and the two breads mark the boundary between two agricultural worlds that meet along the Ethiopian escarpment. A Somali cook using teff is making injera; using sorghum, they are making canjeero. The batter is fermented overnight or longer, and the fermentation does three jobs: it sours the bread, it produces the carbon dioxide that gives the open surface its characteristic eyes, and it makes the grain more digestible. The eyes are not decoration but the point, since they are what hold the ghee, the sugar, or the stew that goes on top. It is eaten at breakfast with sesame oil and sugar, or with suqaar, diced fried meat, and the same bread reappears at other meals to scoop stew. In Yemen the same thing is lahoh and arrived with the centuries of traffic across the Bab-el-Mandeb, which is twenty miles wide and has never separated the two coasts in any meaningful sense.

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 300 g sorghum flour
  • 150 g plain wheat flour
  • 7 g fast-action dried yeast
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 750 ml warm water, approximately

To serve

  • 2 tbsp sesame oil, to serve
  • 2 tbsp sugar or honey, to serve

Method

  1. Whisk the sorghum flour, wheat flour, yeast, and sugar together in a large bowl.
  2. Add the warm water gradually, whisking to a thin, smooth, lump-free batter about the consistency of single cream. It should pour freely from a ladle.
  3. Cover with a cloth and leave at room temperature for eight to twelve hours, or overnight. The batter will bubble across the surface and develop a clean sour smell.
  4. Stir in the salt and, if the batter has thickened, loosen with a little warm water. Do not beat it hard: the bubbles are wanted.
  5. Heat a flat non-stick pan or a lightly oiled griddle over a medium heat. It should be hot enough that a drop of batter sets within a second or two, but not so hot that it browns immediately.
  6. Pour a ladleful into the centre and swirl the pan, or spread it outward in a spiral with the back of the ladle, to a thin round about 20cm across.
  7. Cover with a lid and cook for ninety seconds to two minutes. Do not turn it. The surface will lose its wet sheen and fill with small holes as the steam escapes, and the underside will be pale gold.
  8. Lift out when the top is dry to the touch and stack the breads under a cloth as you go, which keeps them soft.
  9. Serve warm, spread with sesame oil and sprinkled with sugar for breakfast, or alongside a stew.

Notes

Cooking on one side only is the defining technique; turning it gives a pancake, not a canjeero. The batter must be thin, and this is the commonest thing to get wrong, as a thick batter will not develop the open surface. If the eyes do not form, the batter is either too thick or the pan too cool. All-sorghum versions are traditional and give a more fragile bread; the wheat is there to make it handle better and is now standard in most households.

The Gastrographer

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