Lacha Parathas or South Indian Parottas

So… in my last recipe of kuruma, I mentioned parottas (parathas) that I had at Kanchi hotel, some of the best I recall. My hugely popular blogging buddy Jay of Tasty Appetite had blogged these incredible looking parottas (south Indian style) and I was craving them the moment I saw them. Kuruma leftovers today – the kids have the day off from school, which is good, because we have all been down with some viral infection with stomachs hurting, throats that were sore, headaches and general fatigue – as I was saying leftover kuruma warranted some nice parottas and that’s what I made – it turned out well even if I did not use as much oil as the recipe suggested, but otherwise I stuck to Jay’s recipe fully.

Ingredients

3 cups all purpose flour

3tbsp oil

1sp of sugar

1 pinch of salt

1pinch of baking soda

1cup of warm water and some as “kneaded” ;)

Preparation

Add all the ingredients in a mixer and let it mix in a gentle pace at first and when all the dough has come together increase the mixer speed to medium and let it knead for about 5- 10 minutes, stopping every now and then for a spoon of water here and there if you need to bind all the flour.  At about 8 minutes, I took the speed to max and had the ball of dough going nuts :)

Remove from mixer, make a tight ball, put in a vessel and keep closed for about 30 minutes to an hour

When time is up, put back in the mixer and knead for another 3 minutes. Remove and make lemon-sized balls – I got about 11 of those evenly distributed.

Now take a plate and add 1 -2 tsp of oil and roll these balls in the oil and set aside

Once they are all greased roll them the size of a chappati, peel off the surface and make folds with them much like a sari as Jay suggests. Once pleated, hold the ends to stretch them out to the max, because they have a tendency to shrink back. Keeping the length, place one end at the center and roll the dough around to make a pinwheel.  Once they are all done we start to roll them out again.

Here is a trick

To keep the circles and layers intact, oil the bottoms of the pinwheels to give it some elasticity as you roll while dusting the top with dry flour to allow you to keep the stretch going. Again, once they are the size of a chappati, put them on a pan/tawa, basting them with a lightest brush of oil. Let both sides brown before you remove from the pan and place them in your serving platter.

Serve with spicy kuruma or side dish of your choice – Thanks Jay!

This is off to Sweet Karam Kapi's Flavors of Tamilnadu Event