Breakfast Staple · Fermented Pancake

Canjeero (Lahoh)

Photo: Gilabrand (talk) / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

It goes by two names: canjeero in much of southern Somalia, and laxoox (lahoh) in Somaliland, Djibouti and Yemen.

Canjeero is a spongy, honeycomb-holed flatbread made from a fermented batter of flour and water left overnight, then cooked on a hot pan. Somalis typically eat three or four at breakfast, drizzled with ghee and sugar or torn to scoop up suqaar and stews.

Why it's made this way: Overnight fermentation was a way to improve flavor, digestibility, and shelf life of grain batter before refrigeration, and the resulting tangy pancake became the anchor of the Somali breakfast table.