Injera Experiment: Part 1

One day last week I was browsing at the Bulk Barn, and I saw that they had teff flour. I'd heard about it, and since it came with a recipe for injera (Ethiopian bread), I thought I'd give it a try.  I haven't made bread in years, and I've never made sourdough bread. How hard could it be?

Injera is a bread that looks like a thick crêpe. (Teff has almost no gluten.) After reading a few recipes I settled on one that suggested overnight fermentation. I mixed the water and teff flour together, and noted that the "batter" looked like a bowl of sandy water. I added a tablespoon of plain yoghurt, covered the bowl with a tea towel, put it on top of the refrigerator, and crossed my fingers. Nothing happened the first two days; it still bore no resemblance to batter. When I peeked on the third day, there was a complete transformation; I had a thick batter! I spent the next day trying to decide what to do next, and added some water since I was afraid that it would dry out. This turned out to be a mistake. On day four mold appeared around the edge of the batter. After some hasty research on sourdough starter, I removed the surface film from the center of the batter, and reserved about 4 tbsp of what I hoped was pristine batter.  I put the rescued batter in a sterilized jar, and added 2 tbsp of teff flour, 2 tbsp of all purpose flour, and 4 tbsp of warm water, and mixed them together. When I checked a couple of hours later, the mixture had rised and was bubbling merrily.  The next day (today), the batter was no longer bubbling, which I took to mean that it was past its peak. I added 1 tbsp teff, 1 tbsp all purpose flour, and 2 tbsp of warm water. That was a couple of hours ago. There are some bubbles, but I think I'll wait a little longer before I take the next step. My plan is to use part of the starter to ferment a new batch of injera batter tonight, using half teff and half all purpose flour this time. I'm hoping that this fermentation cycle will only take 12 hours.  Late breaking news: I put the jar of starter on top of the 'fridge an hour ago and it's seriously increased in volume. I'm OK to go and ready to mix a new batch of batter!