St. Elmo Sourdough with Teff Starter

I've just discovered something about teff flour that, to me, is pretty amazing. Teff is a grain best known for its use in Ethiopian dishes, most notably the flat bread injera. I started experimenting with teff because I loved the flavor of injera the first time I had Ethiopian food - a very rich, sour flavor with intriguing hints of yogurt. I've used it as a starter a few times, but only noticed this morning that it has a rising capability seemingly akin to yeast. I wish I had taken a few pictures yesterday when I began my teff starter (1:1 flour water). I put about an ounce of my sour starter in the teff mixture at 8:30AM, and after I had incorporated the flour, water, and starter, the contents took up maybe an inch and a half of the container. By 12:00PM the starter had tripled in size filling at least six inches of the container, which isn't too uncommon for even a normal sour, but still very good action. By about 9:00PM that evening, I mixed my dough using 6 ounces of this teff starter (which smelled almost exactly like yogurt at this point) and 8 ounces of my sour starter. The formula was for a rye starter sourdough, but I substituted the teff starter for the rye. The dough was predominantly bread flour, but had a small amount of rye flour in it as well. I let the dough autolyse for about 20min after roughly mixing it together, and then kneaded it for 15min until I had decent gluten formation. I put the dough in a covered bowl and let it rise for an hour. When I checked it to give it a fold, the dough had doubled in size! I folded the dough, and put it back in the bowl for another hour. It doubled again! I let it sit for a final hour before dividing it and it still doubled. I divided and pre-shaped the dough and let it rest for about 15min before shaping and putting into loaf pans. I then covered these with plastic and placed them in the cooler at about 1:00AM, the loafs sitting a good inch below the top of their molds. I woke up today at 8:00AM and took the molds out of the cooler to find that the loafs had risen to the tops of their molds. This is with no yeast at all. I let them warm up at room temp. until 10:30AM, and the loafs were a good half inch above the tops of their molds. I've not seen this kind of action in traditional yeastless sourdough breads, so I was pretty excited.

                                                     This is my sourdough starter

I used about an ounce in the teff/water mixture

This is the resulting teff starter

                                         A view after I used most of it. Smelled just like yogurt.

Look at these guys! No yeast!

 

And the side view better illustrates the rise. Maybe even more than a half inch.

This bread also has one of the richest, most intricate sour flavors I have tasted. I am definitely going to explore the possibilities of teff further!