World Shabbat Breads: Dabo, the Other Ethiopian Bread

When you think Ethiopian bread, you probably think injera—the spongy, sour flatbread made from teff that you use to scoop your food at Ethiopian restaurants.

But while injera is the everyday staple bread of Ethiopia, for both Jews and Christians, there are Ethiopian wheat breads too. And one of them is dabo, a tender, spiced, slightly sweetened bread traditionally eaten by Ethiopian Jews on Shabbat mornings.

All About Dabo

According to Gil Marks in The Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, dabo is simply the Amharic (the language of modern Ethiopia) word for wheat bread; the technical name for these spiced Shabbat breads is ambasha. But since Ethiopian Jews rarely ate any other kind of wheat bread, dabo came to be the name more frequently used.

Marks writes that in Ethiopia, after Saturday morning prayers women would bring their dabo to their local kes, or priest, to be blessed. This ritual of the blessingof the dabo is still going strong in Israel today on the Ethiopian Jewish holy day of Sigd. Sigd, an Israeli national holiday since 2008, falls 50 days after Yom Kippur and celebrates both the fall harvest and the reaffirmation of the Jews’ belief in the Torah and includes a fast that concludes with the eating of the blessed dabo.

Anyway, back to Shabbat—once the bread was blessed and taken home, the family recited an Amharic blessing, Yitbarek, and ate the dabo, followed by a meal that might consist of doro wot (chicken stew with hard boiled eggs) served with injera and gomen (collard greens).

Historically, Shabbat dabo was baked in a round clay pot over embers in a fire pit, the dough wrapped in banana or klabo leaves (to prevent sticking and to help the bread retain moisture). The bread was often left to cook overnight before the start of Shabbat to be fresh for the Saturday meal, much like Yemenite kubaneh.

Today, dabo is baked in a large circular pan or shaped into smaller disks called tabunia and either baked or cooked in a skillet. Some contemporary bakers opt to wrap the bread in lettuce leaves or parchment paper, banana and klabo leaves being hard to come by in Israel.

While dabo was traditionally a sourdough bread made from semolina flour and sweetened with honey (abundant in Ethiopia), I opted to bake a modern Israeli version, adapted from Ethiopian-Israeli baker Yafit Amara’s version via the Jewish Food Society. This version, which can be baked or cooked in a skillet (I opted for the latter), uses sugar rather than honey.

Spices are a hallmark of dabo: coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, fenugreek, and nigella seed are all used. This version calls for nigella, coriander, and fenugreek, which I thought was a very nice combo, but feel free to mix and match depending on your preferences.

In addition to being a Shabbat staple, dabo is also eaten as a dessert or snack, often served with spiced tea, beer, or curd cheese. Dabo kolo (“roasted dabo”), fried pieces of dabo dough, are also popular; in Israel, they often make appearances at hors d’oeuvres at Ethiopian weddings.

A Very Brief History of the Beta Israel

Ethiopia’s Jewish community has existed for at least 15 centuries, if not longer. While legend has it that the Beta Israel (House of Israel), as the community is known, descend from a lost tribe following the destruction of the First Temple, it’s more likely that their ancestors arrived in Ethiopia between the first and sixth centuries, coming as merchants or artisans from various countries in the region.

What is known is that for centuries the Beta Israel existed in isolation from other Jewish communities, and in that time they developed a unique set of religious practices. Did you know that an order of Ethiopian Jewish monks was founded by the 15^th century? Me either. The monastic movement was intended to shore up the community’s religious identity, especially in opposition to attempts by their Christian neighbors to convert them.

As early as the 16^th century, the Beta Israel were in contact with the Egyptian Jewish community—Chief Chief Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Avi Zimra, aka the Radbaz, declared that the Beta Israel were Jews in the 1500s.

In 1855, Daniel ben Hamdya became the first known Ethiopian Jew to visit Israel, where he met with a council of rabbis in Jerusalem regarding the Jewish status of the Beta Israel. Presumably it went well, since by 1864 many prominent rabbis throughout the Jewish world attested to the population’s Jewish identity.

Still, it wasn’t until 1975 when the Israeli Interministerial Commission officially recognized the Beta Israel as Jews under Israel’s Law of Return, setting the stage for the mass migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the 1980s.

Sometimes the Beta Israel were treated well by the Ethiopian government, and sometimes not. Relations weren’t entirely smooth with their Christian neighbors, either—many non-Jewish Ethiopians refer to their Jewish neighbors as falasha (a derogatory term meaning “outsider”).

But things took a decided turn for the worse in the early 1980s when Ethiopia forbade the practice of Judaism and the teaching of Hebrew. Even worse was forced conscription of Jewish boys as young as 12.

Various Israeli rescue operations, most notably Operation Moses in 1984, brought tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel after famines forced Ethiopia to ask foreign nations for aid—these nations included the US and Israel, both of whom exerted pressure on the Ethiopian government to allow the Beta Israel to emigrate.  Ethiopian Jews migrated in droves, not only due to the famine situation but also out of a desire to return to their spiritual home.

The State of Affairs Today

Today, about 135,000 Jews of Ethiopian origin live in Israel (while a few thousand remain in Ethiopia, and about a thousand reside in the US), but it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Today, racism and high poverty rates continue to plague the community, and, much like the US, it seems that Israel has a pretty serious problem with police brutality against its black citizens. At the moment, the police shooting of 24-year-old Yehuda Biadga in Bat Yam in January, is making headlines—as are the massive protests the incident has provoked.

According to Beejhy Barhany, who was born in Ethiopia, grew up in Israel, and now lives in New York City, where since 2014 she has run Harlem’s Tsion Café, xenophobia toward Ethiopian Jews means Israelis have not, by and large, embraced the cuisine of the Beta Israel, and the Ethiopian restaurant scene in Israel remains less than robust.

It seems like Israel might be on the precipice of a moment of reckoning regarding the integration (or lack thereof) of Ethiopian Jews into society, and I hope this tragic incident does spark change.

But for now, on to the dabo…

Dabo

1 pound bread flour

1 pound whole wheat flour

1¼ tablespoon dry yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon ground fenugreek

1 teaspoon ground coriander

½ tablespoon nigella seeds

3 – 3 ½ cups lukewarm water

¼ cup neutral oil, like sunflower or canola

1 tablespoon salt

In a large bowl, combine the bread flour, whole wheat flour, yeast, sugar, fenugreek, coriander, and nigella seeds.

Add 3 cups of water and, mixing by hand, knead until the dough just starts to come together, adding ¼ cup of water more at a time if the dough feels dry. Add the oil and knead until incorporated and then add the salt, continuing to knead until the dough is even in texture and quite sticky, about 2-3 minutes.

Cover and let rise for at least an hour in a warm place, until double in size.

When the first rise is complete, wet your hands and punch the dough down, kneading lightly for 1-2 minutes. Cover and let rise again, 30-45 minutes.

Knead for the third time and let rise for the last time before baking, about 30-45 minutes. After each knead/rise, the dough should rise more quickly and begin to develop texture.

Choose your baking method:

Oven baking: Preheat the oven to 500°F. Line a 9×13” baking dish with parchment paper. With wet hands, move the risen dough to the dish and press and spread it out evenly to fill the dish. Place in the oven and bake at 500°F for 10 minutes, then lower to 350°F and continue baking for 20-30 minutes, until the top is golden brown and tapping on the hardened bottom makes a hollow sound. Let bread cool and serve at room temperature.

Pan baking: Heat a large skillet on the stove top over medium-high heat. Add 1 teaspoon of oil and swirl to coat the pan. Pinch off a handful of dough (a little smaller than the size of a baseball) and place it in the pan pressing down with your fingertips to form an oval shape—you should have enough dough for about 10-12 in total. Add another 1-2 handfuls of dough, depending on how much space you have. Cover and cook for 8-10 minutes until browned on the bottom. Flip, cover and cook for another 8-10 minutes, until browned on the other side. Move to a serving plate and enjoy immediately.

Sources

• “The Biblical Roots of Ethiopian Blessed Bread,” Haaretz (Vered Gutman, December 1, 2016)
• “Bless the Dabo,” TASTE (Julia Bainbridge, November 28, 2018)
• “The Cuisine of the Ethiopian Jews,” Ethiopian Food (Harry Kloman, February 1, 2014)
• “‘Eating the Fat’ and ‘Drinking the Sweet’ on Sigd,” Forward (Ruth Abusch-Magder, November 4, 2010)
• Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (Gil Marks, 2010)
• “Ethiopia Virtual Jewish Tour,” Jewish Virtual Library
• “An Ethiopian Bread Finds a Home on an Israeli Kibbutz,” Jewish Food Society (Yafit Amara, June 21, 2018)
• “Ethiopian Concerns in Israel Need to be Addressed,” Jerusalem Post (February 1, 2019)
• “The History of Ethiopian Jewry,” My Jewish Learning (Atira Winchester)
• “Recipes That Survived the Long Journey From Ethiopia,” Forward (Leah Koenig, February 13, 2013)