Best Quick Basic Chapatisrotis Recipes

BASIC CHAPATI RECIPE

Steps:

• Mix flour and salt.
• Make a hole in flour and mix in water, making a dough.
• Knead for five minutes, cover with wet cloth and refrigerate for an hour.
• Heat a flat pan (non stick pans are not good for this as repeated use at high heats with no liquid tends to crack the Teflon) until smoking hot.
• Roll out 1/2 a handful of dough into a flat round shape (3mm thick) and put into pan, cooking for 1 minute either side.
• Once turned press gently with a towel, until brown.
• Repeat and serve!

BASIC ROTIS OR CHAPPATIS

Steps:

• In a large bowl, add the flour, making a small depression in the centre.
• Pour 1/4 cup water into the flour and start mixing with the flour until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.
• Add remaining water as required, until the flour comes together to form a dough.
• If the mixture is too dry and falls apart, add some more water; if it is too sticky and sticks to your fingers, dust it with some more flour.
• Now knead the dough well for about 5 to 10 minutes; the more you knead it, the softer your rotis will be.
• Cover and keep aside for 15 to 20 minutes.
• Heat a heavy skillet on a low flame.
• Meanwhile, divide the dough into 6 lemon-sized balls and roll into 7-inch circles on a generously floured board using a rolling pin, adding sprinklings of flour to keep the roti from sticking to the rolling pin.
• Once the skillet is sufficiently hot, place one roti on it and increase the flame to medium-high.
• After about 20 seconds, turn the roti and cook on the other side.
• When small-medium bubbles start to appear on the surface of the roti (about 1 minute), remove it from the skillet, remove the skillet from the flame and turn the roti over directly on the flame.
• It should puff up completely; you might need some practice with it.
• Once it puffs up, remove it from the flame and serve hot with any vegetable side!
• Oh, and repeat the cooking procedure for all 6 balls.

CHAPATIS

Steps:

• You will need a medium-sized bowl, a rolling pin, a castiron griddle or heavy skillet, and a small cotton cloth or a paper towel.
• In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the salt and the flour. Make a well in the middle and add just less than 1 cup warm water. Mix with your hand or with a spoon until you can gather it together into a dough (depending on the condition of your flour, you may need a little extra water or a little extra flour to make a kneadable dough). Turn out onto a lightly floured bread board and knead for 8 to 10 minutes. Cover with a damp cloth or a plastic wrap and let stand for 30 minutes or for up to 2 hours. The longer the dough stands, the more digestible the breads.
• Divide the dough into 8 pieces and flatten each with lightly floured fingers. Continue flattening with a rolling pin until each piece is 8 inches in diameter. Once you have started rolling, roll out each bread without flipping it over. To keep the bread from sticking to your bread board, make sure that the bread is lightly floured underneath. Cover the breads with the damp towel or plastic wrap as you roll out others (make sure not to stack the rolled out breads; if you don't have enough counterspace for the breads, roll out just a few and begin cooking, rolling out the others as the breads cook).
• Heat a castiron griddle or skillet over medium-high heat. When the griddle is hot, place a chapati on the griddle, top side of the bread down first. Let cook for only 10 seconds and then gently flip to the second side. Cook on the second side until small bubbles begin to form, approximately one minute. Turn the chapati back to the first side and finish cooking (another minute approximately). At this stage, a perfect chapati will start to balloon. This process can be helped along by gently pressing on the bread. The bread is hot, so we find the easiest method is to use a small cotton cloth or a paper towel wadded up to protect your finger tips. Gently press down on a large bubble forcing the bubble to extend itself wider. If the bread starts to burn on the bottom before it has ballooned, move the bread (with the help of your paper towel) across the skillet, dislodging it from the point at which it is beginning to burn.
• When you are satisfied with your chapati, remove it and wrap in a clean towel. Continue to cook the other breads, stacking each as it is finished on top of the others.

HOW TO MAKE CHAPATIS

Steps:

• To make the dough we're going to add our flour to a bowl and sprinkle the salt. This is optional, in case you know you don't use salt that's fine too.
• Incorporate the salt well, and then we'll pour oil inside it.
• Now you want to mix the flour again to make sure all the oil gets incorporated in to the flour and you don't want lumps of oil in there. just for a few seconds.
• When the oil and salt are nicely incorporated, add water slowly. This water has been warmed in the microwave for about 30 seconds, pour little at a time and just mix.
• We have used whole wheat flour from the Indian store as its a little different from the whole wheat flour that you find in the grocery stores.
• The one in the American grocery stores is usually a lot darker in color, so chapattis turn a little browner than you probably like them, this one is available in any Indian store its called chapatti atta and is readily available.
• Just mix all that dough in and form a nice ball.
• It doesn't take a lot of time at all, but people are scared to do this, because you're using your hands and that freaks people out, but it really is not that bad. It literally takes under a minute to make this dough.
• When the dough is in a nice ball, we're going to take just a couple of drops of oil, just to lightly coat it and in that way it doesn't form a dry skin on top of the dough. Then keep it covered for about 15 to 20 minutes.
• So if you are not comfortable using your hands while making the dough, here's another alternative way of doing it. Here's the whole wheat flour, I'm going to use the food processor, and if you notice I'm using a chopping blade instead of a dough blade, because it just mixes better and it gets all the edges and there's nothing left at the sides.
• I'm going to mix in the salt at this point and I'm going to give it a mix.
• Then I'm going to add in the oil.
• I've also heated up the water for 30 seconds and am going to pour it in very slowly once i have the food processor on. This is just as easy.
• It's best just to give it one knead by hand just to incorporate everything and make sure there's no air bubbles and all in it.
• This food processor option is really good if you're making dough in bulk because i understand that dough freezes really well
• Then put a couple of drops of oil and just smother a little bit, rub it a little bit so that it doesn't dry out and cover it up. Then set it aside for 15 minutes as before.
• After it has been resting for about 15 to 20 minutes we're going to knead the dough one more time quickly.
• This is 1 and 1/2 cups of dry flour, so it makes approximately 9 chapattis. But there's no signs involved, so if you like really big chapattis it can be less and if you want small ones you know it'll make more.
• But something that fits in to your palm or close fist, a kind of a golf size ball is perfect.So just divide it out.
• Before we start rolling out our chapattis we'll go ahead and turn on our stove and get our pan heated.
• The pan we are using is called a tawa. You can also use a non stick frying pan.
• Put the stove on medium heat, or a little bit higher than medium. And you want to make sure your pan is really hot before you put your first chapatti on.
• So while our pan is heating, we're going to take our dough and form a nice round ball. If you start off with a round ball, the shape changes, but your final chapatti will probably be round also.
• We're then going to dip it in some dry flour, shake off the excess and role it out.
• Now this rolling pin is my favorite. It's a thinner version, but a lot of people are used to the thicker version of the rolling pins. Whatever you have is absolutely fine and if you notice that your chapatti is sticking to the ground or to whatever surface you are rolling out on, take it and dip it again in the dry flour.
• This is a trick that my mom taught me when i was learning how to do this when i was little, you rub your hand across it, and instantly you'll feel where its thicker and where it's thinner and then you can just roll the parts that are thicker, that way you don't have a chapatti that is really thin on one side and really thick on the other side that also helps in blowing up when you're cooking it.
• The tawa looks hot so we're going to put our rolled chapatti in and move it around to make sure it doesn't stick.
• Then we leave it alone until we start seeing bubbles appearing, and then we're going to flip it around, and let go for a few seconds.
• Now we're going to take some oil and you can just dip your spoon in to your oil and then whatever is left, the remainder few drops, just put it on and smear it on like that and flip it around and press. You want to press where it bubbles to force the air to the other side which is not risen yet. Smear the oil again and press.
• You want to cook the chapatti until you see that all the doughiness is gone and it looks fully cooked. It's ok to have little brown spots on it.
• It looks delicious and there's nothing like home made chapattis. You can buy these from the store but when you taste these like fresh off the stove it's awesome.
• And one of the other reasons why it doesn't taste as nice sometimes is a lot of people don't use oil in their chapattis, but I put oil inside the dough and what happens with that is that when you eat the chapatti a little bit later on, it still tastes nice and soft, as supposed to the dough which has been prepared without oil, which tends to turn a little bit chewier.
• Once the chapatti is cooked I like to keep it in a nice insulated cannister like this. It helps it to stay nice and warm. So you can finish all your chapattis and sit with you family and enjoy your dinner and they'll still be piping hot.
• note: if u dont wish to use oil on ur chapatis just use a clean cloth to press the chapatis after u have flipped them the second time n press lightly to ensure the air is distributed evenly and the chapatis wud puff up.enjoy !

QUICK BASIC CHAPATIS/ROTIS

Steps:

• Heat iron skillet or no-stick skillet on medium flame.
• Sift flour and salt into bowl. (If no sifter, fluff with fork.).
• With a wooden spoon, stir in oil, if using, and 1/4 C water, continue to slowly add water until enough water to form a ball.****.
• Turn onto floured surface. Knead for 20 strokes or until dough is elastic. Use only enough flour to keep dough from sticking.
• Divide dough into 4 golf-ball sized balls.
• Roll each in flour.
• With a rolling pin, roll out one ball into about an 8" thin circle. Keep a pile of flour beside you and dust the dough often but only enough to keep it from sticking.
• When skillet is hot enough to immediately sizzle dry a drop of water, put chapati on.
• When bubbles form on top of chapati (1-3 minutes), look at bottom. If it has a few brown spots, flip it over.
• The second side takes much less time, and when it has a few brown spots, remove the pan from the fire and toss chapati directly on the burner (With a gas stove--leave roti in pan and pan on burner, use spatula to massage roti and it will puff up -- Manjula shows how on YouTube). In a few seconds, it will puff up like a balloon. If it doesn't, the dough was not kneaded/rested long enough or there was too much flour worked inches.
• Remove from heat to plate. (Some people slap the air out first.).
• Brush with oil, if desired, to keep soft.
• Cover with towel to keep warm.
• Repeat with next ball. The second and later chapatis always seem to cook faster than the first.
• Serve warm.
• By your third batch, you'll be fast enough to roll out the next one while one is cooking!
• *chapati flour available at Indian food markets, chapati flour does not need to rest to come out properly, other flours do need to rest.
• **chapati flour substitute: 1/2 C whole wheat plus 1/2 C enriched white flour or 3/4 C, 1/4 C respectively (my favorite). Or 1 C all purpose white flour. If using this, after kneading, lest rest for 30 minutes in a warm place--or up to an hour if in cool place, until when you press your finger into it, it feels elasticky and springs back a little. Refrigerate now or continue with dividing into balls, etc.
• ***you can also make it up as much as 5 days ahead of time and store refrigerated in a ball wrapped in plastic. It's best to remove it from the fridge an hour or 2 before using, but if not, it'll just be a little more difficult to roll out.
• ****For flatbread beginners: If you get too much water, just add some flour. If you're new to this, as soon as all the flour is gathered in little balls go ahead and put it on a pile of flour on your work surface and if necessary work water into it a little at a time. It will not hurt the dough no matter how much you work with it -- it will only make it better because it activates the gluten which is what makes the layers you should see after cooking the chapati if you tear it apart -- if you do not see these after cooking, the dough was not worked long enough. Other than burning them, these are foolproof enough to always be edible!