teff in backyard

Is anyone growing and harvesting teff in a backyard? Does it shatter? How to thresh and does it need milling? I am interested in growing it because injera tastes great!

Angelika Maier wrote:Is anyone growing and harvesting teff in a backyard? Does it shatter? How to thresh and does it need milling? I am interested in growing it because injera tastes great!

Although neither me nor anyone i know is growing this pseudo-cereal, it can be grown in the backyard and harvested by yourself. I would imagine that a nice field of this grass would be needed to produce sufficient teff wheat, this might be good or bad depending on the rotational sketch of your crop (i think that buying the grains might be cheaper than spending the area of land to grow it).

It shatters easily; can be hand threshd, aswell as with machanical devices. It also does need milling, the milling level will dictate the kind of purpose you can give to the wheat. Since i believe your the same person who posted about the Corona Mill, i could imagine that the crushed teff particles may be too coarse to produce a fine dough, yet i have absolute no empirical data. Therefore, i would strongly suggest you to mill different kind of grains and check if you can produce baking-level wheat, aswell as milling teff in particular.

The Corona mill is great for crushing livestock feed, it is also great for crushing the grains used for brewing procceses, such as homemade beer. It crushes spices like a boss and should be good enough for whole wheat breads. The corona mill can be easily upgraded by removing the handle and coupling the endless screw of the mill to the rotor of an electromagnetic motor, preferably, with variable speed; which are cheap, small, easy to attach and operate and cheap to run at small scales.

Itd be great if you could provide some feedback

We went to an Ethiopian resturaunt and was impressed with injera too. The owner/cook/waitress stayed to chat with us a while. She said the flat bread wasn't quite authentic as it acts different here then "back home". She had to add baking soda to get it to rise sorta similarly. She thought it may be an elevation thing.
I have not grown teff yet. I have the seeds for next year though.
The Food Network came up with this recipe, but without baking soda. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/injera-ethiopian-flatbread-3364733

I grew Teff in my backyard once in the 1990s. A very small plot but I stripped the seeds into a small container and then blew away the chaff. I think harvesting, threshing, and cleaning this grain would be pretty easy. As far as cooking with it I have found that wonderful pancakes can be made with whole grains in a blender. Add about a cup of grain and a cup of liquid and blend until smooth. Then if I wanted injera I would simply add some sourdough starter and ferment overnight before cooking as it's a pour batter flatbread like pancakes.

That sounds good! William what kind of climate are you in? And are the yields good - say comparable to amaranth? Up here the summers are mostly not terribly hot. I think in the restaurant they replace the teff partially with wheat beacause teff is expensive to buy.