Traditional Kenyan Breads
Ugali
In Kenya, the national staple dish is Ugali. It enjoys celebrity-like popularity. Whenever anyone is asked about their favorite thing to eat, the immediate response is Ugali. Ugali is made from cornmeal, or maize, the staple grain of Kenya. It has a thick, stiff, malleable porridge-like quality to it. It’s tailor-made for shaping into a small scoop in one hand, then using that scoop to mop up meat or veggie goodness.
Chapati
Chapati, pronounced [chuh-pah-tee] is unleavened flat bread. It is a staple food served at most meals in East Africa, (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda). This fried bread is from South Asia and also found in Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. This bread is used as an eating utensil, as well as a bread.
Chapati is an unleavened flatbread made of flour, water, oil, and salt. It is without a doubt my favorite new flour-based treat. The layered oil throughout the dough, thanks to a jelly-roll style rolling process, creates the most incredible crunch factor. This is my recipe for a basic chapati bread, just like we made all across Kenya. It’s quick and easy to prepare, and perfect to serve with stews, curries, or to use like a pita wrap.
Chapati, has many variations depending on who makes it and where they live. Add just enough water, adding a little at a time, to make a soft dough that is elastic but not sticky. Go slow adding the water. Add the water as you go along and only as needed. Divide into four (4) parts. Roll each piece into a ball. Divide each of the 4 balls into 2 balls. You should have a total of 8 balls (the size of the balls is dependent on how big and how thick you want your chapati). Flatten each ball, on a lightly-floured surface to prevent the dough from sticking to the surface.
Preheat a lightly-greased frying pan or Cast-Iron Skillet over medium heat. One at a time, cook each chapati in the hot pan. Brush one side of the chapati with vegetable oil and the place in the hot skillet. Fry slowly until light golden brown. The chapati is ready to flip when you begin to see raised bumps on its surface. Use a spatula (or use your hands as the people of Kenya do) to flip the chapati over in the pan; let cook until light golden brown. Remove from heat and set on a plate. * Corn flour is flour made out of corn - not corn meal.
Read also: Traditional South African Bread
Basic Chapati Recipe:
- Combine flour and salt in a large bowl and mix well.
- Add water and mix thoroughly until a sticky dough forms.
- Turn dough out onto a floured surface and get those arm muscles ready to rock.
- Using the palms of your hands, knead dough until a soft elastic dough forms, about 10 minutes.
- Cover dough tightly with plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes.
- Divide dough into 4 equal parts, and shape each into small dough balls.
- One at a time, roll dough balls into 8-inch round flatbreads (think tortillas) on a floured surface, about 1/8-inch thick.
- Spoon 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil onto flatbread coating it entirely.
- Tightly roll dough into itself like a fruit rollup, until you have a long snake-like tube.
- Coil rolled dough into a tight snail-shaped disc.
- Flatten dough with the palm of your hand, then roll out one final time on a floured surface into an 8-inch round flatbread.
- Repeat with remaining chapatis.
- Heat a large cast-iron (or heavy bottomed) pan over medium heat, pour in 1 tablespoon of olive oil.
- When oil is hot, add 1 flatbread and fry about 1 minute per side, or until golden brown and crispy.
- Repeat with remaining chapatis.
- Serve them while still warm, or keep them in an airtight container 1-2 days.
Yields 1 Serving
Servings Category: African
Prep Time: 1 hr 5 mins
Cook Time: 10 mins
Read also: The Story of Sourdough Bread
Total Time: 1 hr 15 mins
Mandazi
A Step by Step guide// Mandazi Preparation// Ugandan Half Cake
Mandazi is a sweet East African bread that puts donuts to shame, and it’s a dish that you can find in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania (it also goes by the name mahamri).Mandazi dough is traditionally leavened with yeast, kneaded with cardamom, and flavoured with coconut powder. Once the dough has risen, it’s rolled out and cut into triangle shapes, and then deep-fried in boiling oil until each piece is golden brown and crisp.
There are so many ways to eat mandazi. You can eat it freshly fried, and rip it open to let out the steam in the hollow middle. Or you can save it for a snack, and dunk it into some afternoon chai tea (an East African favourite). It’s also popular for breakfast, and it’s an ideal vessel for anything that’s cooked in sauce - like vyazi ya kanga (potatoes simmered in tomato sauce) or mbazi (pigeon peas in coconut).
Mandazi Recipe:
Read also: Dabo: A Taste of Ethiopia
Ingredients:
- 4 cups Flour
- ½ cup Coconut powder
- 1 cup Milk
- ½ cup Sugar
- 2 tbsp Vegetable oil
- ½ tsp Baking powder
- ¾ tsp Yeast
- 1 tbsp Cardamom
Directions:
Preparing the Dough
- Mix flour and dry yeast in a bowl.
- Add the remaining ingredients.
- If using a bread mixer, let the dough mix for at least 20 minutes.
- If using your hands, knead the dough well for about 20 minutes as well.
- The dough should be soft and just an itsy bit sticky (add more milk if necessary).
- Divide the dough and shape it into balls. Each ball should be about the size of your palm.
- Cover with a cloth and let it sit and rise for about an hour, or store the dough in a plastic container/cling film and refrigerate or freeze to use later.
Cooking the Dough
- Take a ball of dough, and sprinkle lightly with flour. This is to make sure the dough doesn’t stick to a surface when you’re rolling it out.
- Using a rolling pin, roll out the piece of dough into a flat circular shape. Roll it until the dough is about a millimetre thick.
- Slice the dough into 4 pieces, similarly to the way pizza is sliced.
- Now it’s time to fry the dough. Pour oil into a frying pan (the pan should be fairly deep) and set it to medium-high heat.
- Once the oil is hot, put the slices of dough into the oil. Let it simmer on each side for about a minute or so, turning the dough a total of three times.
- Once it’s golden brown and puffed up, take it out of the oil and serve.
Injera
There are similar variants to injera in other African countries, namely Sudan, Chad and Kenya. In Kenya, a variant of injera is eaten by the Borana, Gabra living in the Northern parts of Kenya.
Injera is a sour fermented pancake-like flatbread with a slightly spongy texture, traditionally made of teff flour. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, injera is a staple. Traditionally, injera is made with just two ingredients: teff flour and water. The fermentation process is started by adding ersho, a clear, yellow liquid that accumulates on the surface of fermenting teff flour batter and is collected from previous fermentations.
Teff flour is ground from the grains of Eragrostis tef, also known as teff, a cereal crop from the Ethiopian Highlands. Teff production is limited to certain middle elevations with adequate rainfall and is a low-yield crop, so it is relatively expensive for the average farming household. Many farmers in the Ethiopian highlands grow their own subsistence grains, so wheat, barley, corn, or rice flour are sometimes used to replace the teff content.
The baking method for injera has changed little since its origin. Traditionally, the flour is mixed with water and fermented. Batter is poured rapidly in a spiral from the outside inwards. It is baked by pouring the mixture onto a large circular griddle, known as a mitad. The injera is baked into large, flat and round pieces. In terms of shape, injera compares to the French crêpe and the Indian dosa as a flatbread cooked in a circle and used as a base for other foods. In taste and texture, it is more similar to the South Indian appam. The bottom surface of the injera, which touches the heating surface, has a relatively smooth texture, while the top is porous.
Baking is done on a circular griddle-either a large black clay plate over a fire or a specialized electric stove. The griddle is known as a mitad (ምጣድ) (in Amharic) or mogogo (ሞጎጎ) (in Tigrinya). Woman checking the baking of an injera in her house.
In Ethiopia and Eritrea, a variety of stews, salads (during Ethiopian Orthodox fasting, for which believers abstain from most animal products), and more injera (called injera firfir) are placed on the injera for serving. Using one's hand (traditionally only the right one), small pieces of injera are torn and used to grasp the stews and salads for eating. The injera under these stews soaks up the juices and flavors of the foods, and after the stews and salads are gone, this bread is also consumed. Injera is thus simultaneously a food, eating utensil, and plate.
In Ethiopia and Eritrea, injera is eaten daily in virtually every household. Injera is the most important component of food in Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is often both the serving platter and utensil for a meal. Hearty stews such as wat are placed on top of the bread and then the meal is eaten by tearing pieces of injera off and scooping up the stews.
While injera's literal use as the base and staple of any Ethiopian and Eritrean meal has not changed since its creation, its symbolic value has changed. Different varieties of injera can be found in the highlands vis-à-vis the lowlands of Ethiopia. In the lowlands, injera is often made with sorghum and in the highlands it is more commonly made with barley. Either way, because it is made with something other than teff, its symbolic value has already decreased compared to the symbolic value of injera made with teff. There are symbolic value differences with types of teff as well. The variant eaten in South Sudan, Sudan and Chad is known as kisra.
Commercial Bread Brands in Kenya
Kenya also has a thriving market for commercially produced bread. Here are some popular brands:
- Broadways Premium
- United
- Festive
- Supa Loaf
1. Broadways Premium: Their brown bread is a little on the harder side, especially the crust. However all these issues have been addressed by their white bread, not the original in the orange wrapper, but the one on a purple one. It is called Broadways Premium, and it is less salty, slightly sweeter, and soft.
2. United: United is a bread brand by United Millers, who lately have an array of products. I know I said Supa Loaf is what to go with if you want sweet bread, but if you want delicious and sweet bread, then the yellow United it is.
3. Festive: Festive has one of the most loved brown breads, it is fluffy and soft, something you wouldn’t expect out of brown bread, I don’t know how they pull it off but it is just different( in a good way).
4. Supa Loaf: This is the all-around balanced bread, not so sweet, not so salty, not so dry, just alright. It is so soft that you literally can’t apply spread without it tearing and crumbling off, too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing anymore.
These are just a few examples of the many types of bread you can find in Kenya. Each bread has its own unique flavor, texture, and cultural significance, making Kenyan cuisine a truly diverse and delicious experience.
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