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Injera: Contemporary Forms for an Ancient Ritual
Every culture relies on its bread. Bread unfolds the story and essence of culture and people. Injera—a regional sourdough flatbread with a slight spongy texture—unfolds the story of Ethiopia and its people.
Teff is the traditional grain used to make Injera. It is gluten-free, with high values of fiber, calcium, iron and protein.Through in-depth research that I conducted in Ethiopia and Israel, I understood the value and future of teff and injera, which lead me to the idea for my project: A set of utensils for a new preparation ceremony of injera—one that combines tradition and innovation, and thereby makes teff accessible to the modern kitchen.
Design Team
Design by Dana Douiev with the guidance of Professor Ido Bruno
Department of Industrial Design inBezalel Academy of Art and Design
Photographer: Oded Antman
Film : Soda Creation Video
Dana Douiev
Threshing teff in Ethiopia
Oded Antman
The entire set of utensils
Oded Antman
Sourdough bowl
The structure allows ventilation and provides a space for dough swelling.
Oded Antman
Sourdough bowl in open state
Oded Antman
Closed state of cover and plate
Oded Antman
Open state of cover and plate—the dough is poured onto the surface and then covered with the top piece.
Oded Antman
Bottom side of the injera plate
Oded Antman
Mixing and pouring object
Oded Antman
The spoon is placed in the open groove of the drip receptacle.
Oded Antman
After the dough is given time to swell, it is mixed with wet ingredients.
Oded Antman
The design emphasizes and celebrates the sense of touch.
Oded Antman
The design is light and easy to carry.
Through these utensils a new ceremony takes place, in which cultural elements are renewed. Elements that have been lost during the cultural migration from village to city, and from inside Ethiopia to foreign countries. All this takes place appropriately and with consideration for the modern kitchen’s pace.
The project explores the African and Ethiopian culture in relation to agriculture and food. Teff is a “super food” that has high nutritional values and is the basis for the preparation of Injera—which forms the basis of Ethiopian cuisine and holds a monumental place in the Ethiopian kitchen. Teff stands at the gates of modern culture and this project comes to welcome it in through the use of new utensils.
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Comments
Lovely objects and nicely in spirit with what I also saw doing AP work around injera in Ethiopia. All the right parts are there and each is beautifully and thoughtfully made. The mitad (disc) portion is a bit small, but I presume it was sized for standard kitchen burners rather than traditional mimicry.
The only thing that strikes me as off the mark is the actual cultural relevance. Few if any modern Ethiopian kitchens care to make injera in the same way that only a tiny minority of westerners make bread at home; most of us buy it from bakers. While injera is a part of Ethiopian food culture on the whole, but once people's income rise above subsistence farming levels they almost all just buy it from professional injera makers. Also very, VERY few households I worked with put any care at all into the kitchen and its tools: women are seldom doted on with spare cash, and they do all the cooking. Knives forged from rebar, cracked gourd pots, and rusting stoves are often stuck behind lovely new houses with modern accoutrements. That design and fabrication is many orders of magnitude nicer than any cooking supplies I ever encountered (though I spent a mere 2 months there, so I'm hardly a complete expert.) Pretty object, though.