I’ve never been obsessed enough about bread to make it myself, apart from the occasional pizza dough. My inamorata grows live sour dough starter in the fridge; I'd be stepping in on her fermenting turf.

I have a strange osmotic relationship with bread; I am susceptible to changing local pressures more than a desire to seek out the best hand-made breads available. I tend to pick up fleeting bread obsessions depending on where I am. In Vietnam and Cambodia, I'd quite happily subsist on the light baguettes used for the Vietnamese sandwich, banh mi (num pan in Khmer). They're not amongst the world's great artisanal bread: the ingredients are too cheap and the process as fast and industrial as possible but they're on every street corner throughout both countries. In many ways, they tell the story of both the success and failure of French colonisation of Indochina at the same time. The locals both assimilated the French style bread whilst they make a mockery of it.

I spent about half my time in Malaysia hunting down roti chanai vendors for their flat, stringy pancake with curry. I'm happy enough to eat curry and bread at any time of the day.

Since I've moved house, I'm becoming an injera junkie, possibly due to the increase in local supply. Five of the Ethiopian restaurants mentioned beneath the injera recipe on SBS are within walking distance from my (ex-bootlegger) abode. Not less than two bakeries in the suburb specialise in the foamy pancake.

Injera is the bread synonymous with Ethiopian food. It’s a table cloth-sized white, foamy pancake that looks like a comically flattened crumpet. It has a slight but addictive sour taste, firstly from the sour teff flour used in the recipe, secondly from being allowed to ferment for a few days before cooking, building up the lactic and acetic acids like sourdough bread. Teff is a tiny grain that contains no gluten, so it's good for pancakes (and celiacs).

Injera is served by laying the bread flat on the table, making neat piles of Ethiopian curries (wot) and grilled meat (tibs) on top, then communally picking away at the piles of food by using the bread as cutlery. Soaked curry juice is retained in the bread. Nothing is wasted.

The special flat grill used to make it is called a mitad and according to the anonymous editor from Wikipedia, "is difficult to use, produces large amounts of smoke, and is dangerous to children." This is an apt description of any of my kitchen activities, at least, the activities that I enjoy. Even my toaster from the 1940s which lacks a pop-up function or an on-off switch, risks setting everything on fire on a daily basis. Which is probably why I don't risk too much obsession.