Making dough for Roti and Paratha (Dough for indian bread)

Soft, pliable dough for roti / paratha

The quality of dough is the deciding factor how good the roti / paratha are made. Hard dough and roti / paratha will not be soft, gooey dough and rolling the dough to roti / paratha will become extremely difficult. I learnt this truth hard way. After marriage when I entered my kitchen I had no Idea how to make dough for roti. I added water to flour and it became thin so I added some more flour and mixed. Now it became hard. I kept on repeating this and for myself and my husband landed up making dough of one Kg flour. Dough sticking to my hands and on the plate, flour spilled on the kitchen platform was sight to be seen. When my maid came she had a hearty laugh at my cost. Since then 30 years have gone by and now wish to write about the process of making dough for the benefit of other so that nobody has to face the same fate as mine!!!

Preparation Time: 5 min.

Making Time: 10 min

Servings: Makes 12-15 Roti / 8-10 Paratha

Ingredients Required For Making Dough for Roti / Paratha:

• 250 gm. Whole Wheat flour

• 200ml. Water

Direction for Making Dough for Roti / Paratha:

• Take wheat flour in a bowl or big plate.

• Add 40-45 ml. of water and mix with your fingers till all water gets mixed.

Adding water in little portion

• Repeat again by adding 40-45 ml. water and mixing with remaining dry flour.

Mixing the flour and water

• Add 20-30 ml. water and mix collecting the dry flour with wet flour.

Kneading and mixing

• Start ploughing through the wet flour mixture with your knuckles and fist. This is called kneading. Mix the wet and dry flour in this process.

Kneading the flour to mix dry and wet flour

• Flatten the dryish dough which will be formed and add 25-30 ml. water and mix by kneading  folding the flattened dough due to kneading and kneading again.

Folding and Kneading to get soft dough

• Repeat this flattening and kneading action 2-3 times.

• Flatten the roughly made dough (It will be slightly hard and not pliable). Add 10 ml. of water and knead.

Dough almost ready

• While kneading the dough will flatten, fold and knead 4-5 times. This will make the dough soft  and  pliable.

Soft, pliable doughfor roti / paratha

• Store in airtight container.

• This dough can be kept in fridge for 3-4 days but outside the fridge at 35-38^oCit starts fermenting in 6-7 hrs.
• The amount of water required may vary by with the type of flour and the coarseness of flour.

Tips:

• Excess of water can make the dough gooey which can be made to proper dough by adding dry flour

• Hard dough can always be made to soft dough by adding water and kneading so add water in little proportions to avoid messy situation.

Suggested Variations:

• 1/2Teaspoon salt can be added to the flour before kneading.

• After the dough is made 1/2teaspoon oil can be sprinkled on the dough and made to big ball and stored.

• 1 Teaspoon oil  / ghee can be added to flour before making the dough.