How to Make Soft and Buttery Indian Roti

Hi Bold Bakers! Ami is here today to show us how to make traditional roti and what this recipe means to her. Hi everyone! So I'm so excited to share this recipe with you. This is a traditional Indian flatbread that my mom made for us growing up and now my mom comes and visits me and my kids and my dad and I all make it together. It's really fun. There's a lot of different kinds of Indian flatbread. They're all usually made with a durum wheat flour which is what we're going to be using. The bread is used to pick up food. A lot of Indian food is used is picked up with our hands. We don't use knives and forks but we'll use this flatbread to actually pick up vegetables or meat or whatever it is you're eating. That sounds fun. And if you're like utensils. Yeah exactly and if you're like my kids you like it straight off hot off the pan with a lot of ghee and maybe a little honey. Yummy. So to get started we have this nice really finely ground durum wheat flour. It's called atta. It's the same semolina is the same as this but it's a coarser ground. So you'll find these in Indian grocery stores or online. To that we're going to add a little bit of salt and then I've got a little bit of oil that I'm going to pour right into the dough. So this is kind of like what I do with our tortillas. Remember we made tortillas? Yeah. Which I think contributes to correct me if I'm wrong but to the bubbles that you get. Like just giving you that like the moisture in the flatbread so then you get the little airy pockets. Yeah you know yeah that and also the water will create steam. Yeah that's true. Which will do that. You know I you know I always kind of get mixed up about what creates what. Yeah me too. But what I'm doing right now is I'm just rubbing the oil into the flour so that it's nice and evenly coated. It's almost like what you would do with pastry. Maybe it's tenderizing. For those of you who don't know Ami has been with us for four years now since Georgia was born and she helps with every recipe that you see on Bigger Bolder Baking. Every video. There's not anything in Bigger Bolder Baking that you're not a part of I don't think. So you know when it comes to a different culinary perspective I have to say I appreciate yours because I tend to have a one-track mind when it comes to desserts. It's hard for me to think outside my box. With recipes like roti and then other recipes from different cultures I think you bring a really interesting point of view from that way. Well thank you. It's because I love food so much. Yeah. So we're done mixing up the oil and the flour. It's nice and mixed up. So we're going to add in water. I'm not necessarily going to be using all of the water in here. I go it's sort of a go by feel. So I'll add most of it and then what I'm going for is a really soft dough that's not too sticky to roll but the softer you can get it the thinner you can roll out your roti which is what you want. I get this. This is a mom trick. Yeah. This is like when you ask your mom how do you make that thing and she's like a little bit of this and a little your mom doesn't sound like that but a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But she pretty much does. I'm like mom tell me I can't tell you how many times I've been calling my mom like exactly how do you make it and she's like oh you know just throw this in throw that in. That doesn't help mom. Yeah it's how moms keep their power. It'll never be as good. My goal is for George to be able to say my mom makes the best ever chocolate chip cookies. My goal is for my dad to eat something that I've made and say it's just as good as your mom's which has never happened to this day. You gotta keep on working on that. All right so this is getting really close. I always just you know one of the things that's really nice to do once you think you've got dough to the consistency as you want is you want to let it rest for about 15 minutes or so so that the dough can fully hydrate. But this is pretty soft. If you give it a pinch you see it still feels a little firm. You notice that with semolina and like with durum wheat is that it needs time to hydrate. Just that particular type of flour so like that resting will really help right. And I might just chance it and put a little splash more water in just to get it a little softer. If you for some reason overshoot and add too much water you can always just throw in a little more flour. You know it's trial and error but really I think with this a little softer is better. If I'm making rotlis for dinner I'll mix up this dough and then I'll go ahead and make the rest of the dinner the vegetable or whatever else I'm making. I'll cover this with a plate which I'm about to get and once I'm done cooking everything else the dough's had a chance to hydrate. Okay let it chill for how long? About 15 minutes. Let it hang out for 15 minutes okay. Mommy it's been 15 minutes what do you think? All right I think we're ready to go. So yeah that feels like nice and pliable hydrated not too sticky. No you know it's one thing that people um one thing that I learned I think actually in college was that when um making doughs like pastries and bread doughs like this when you let them rest put them in the fridge or on the counter they um express water express yeah yeah so they get wetter um so you know when you think like maybe my dough was a little bit drier or whatever um I want to let it rest it actually gets wetter and then it becomes even more pliable. Oh. So that's just something to factor in. Interesting. There you go the more you know. The more I know. I learn something new every day. Can I keep this? I find this really handy. I see good use for this with George I'll be like come here. So this is okay so I'm gonna divide the dough up into eight pieces. Okay. And we I just do it by feel. Of course you do. So you know um do it. I do it by weight I'd have to do I'd have to weigh them all out. You know if it's if it's not if it's not roti um I do it by weight all the time but for some reason this is the way my mom did it so this is the way I do it. I'm not gonna argue with your mom. Yeah exactly you know just simple and this way you can kind of feel in your hands if one ball of dough feels a little bit bigger than the other um and then I'll try to test them all like this and if one feels a little bigger you just pinch off and then when they all feel randomly more or less the same you're ready. I like to roll uh with uh just plain white flour mostly because I find it just finer if I use the semolina flour the atta flour to roll it uh the finish ends up being a little gritty for me. I get that. So um I like this better um but we do because the dough is so hydrated we will need a fair amount of flour so I like to just take the ball of dough roll it make it nice and even and flatten it out I like that so that you've started out nice and then I'll just dip it once or twice and then make sure I get a nice amount of flour on the counter press it in. Press it into the counter. Just press it in so that it's nice and flat. Okay. And then um you feel like you need a little more flour? I feel like I do because yours looks like it has more. Yeah the hardest part of making roti I think is getting a nice circle so you just do your best. I'm guessing rotating is the trick? Yeah you kind of pick it up and rotate sometimes if you've got enough flour and you've got um almost the most imperceptible circular motion with your rolling pin the dough will sort of roll on its own. It's kind of moving by itself right? It is kind of moving by itself. Isn't that funny? Come here to me what's this called? This is called a a vellon. Oh. We just call it a rolling pin but it's the kind of rolling pin that you would find in any kitchen where someone's making a lot of Indian food. A lot of flatbreads probably. Yeah. Yeah it's lovely. Just a really simple rolling pin. But you know if you don't have one of these you can use any sort of rolling pin. I mean what remind me what inches or how many inches? You know about eight inches or so. Okay. But mostly what you really want to do is make sure that uh try to get it as absolutely thin as possible and even. That's the key that's the trick if you don't get a perfect circle I think it's fine. All right so got our dough nice and thin. What do you think? Right it's almost translucent like I can kind of almost see my hand through it. I'm gonna mine a little bit there's a bit of a thicker bit there. Yeah and you can certainly cook it thicker but if you really want that classic roti texture you want to get it super thin. What do you think? I think that's pretty good. Can you see my face? All right so let's cook these off. Okay. Okay so we're ready to cook off. Gemma's gonna keep rolling while I show you what to do over here. Now I've got a cast iron skillet. It's dry there's no oil on it and it's set to about medium heat and so we want it nice and hot. It's been heating up for quite a while and then I'm going to put the roti directly on the pan. It's nice to have your pan nice and hot so that this cooking process goes really fast. As you can see we're going to start to see little bubbles on the surface and then you can use tongs but I really just I pick up my hand and I flip it really fast and then after about 30 seconds it's going to start bubbling on the other side. You're going to want to use gloves for this. You're going to pick up your pan and take your tongs and put your roti directly on the flame. You want it to bubble up because that steam is going to cook the inside. Look at that that's really nice. As soon as it's bubbled up without too many brown spots you're done and you take a little bit of ghee. I don't like to put ghee over the entire surface. I do the edges and then just a little bit in the middle and that just keeps it nice and soft and gives it a really nice flavor. All right let's do it again. Rotis go really fast and they're also a really fun group project. My kids love rolling these out. I will divide up the dough so they'll do the rolling and I'll do the cooking and it goes by really fast. So this is a really nice project to do with your kids. Kids love dividing up and rolling dough. It's really fun even when I was little I mixed up the dough myself. My mom would always give that to me as a project and then they can roll and you can concentrate on cooking. When my parents come visit me my mom makes the dough, my kids do the rolling, my dad does the cooking and I'm just stuck putting the ghee on the roti but it's pretty fun. Once that roti puffs up it's completely cooked on the inside and you want to do your best to get as few little brown spots as possible. You want flatbread that's really soft and pliable so that you can pick up all of your food with it. Well here we are there is nothing I love more than fresh hot rotis. I can't believe I didn't eat them as I was making them. This is so nice and soft and pliable it's going to be perfect for picking up this these yummy chickpeas. It's so good. Ami there you go. Thank you. This looks so good I can't wait to eat. Look at how soft these are Gemma. They're so soft and like amazing pliable and foldy and I'm guessing yummy. You know the the nice thing about rotis or any any of these Indian flatbreads is they're really mild they're a wonderful way to eat really spicy and savory food. I can't wait. Kind of like a blank canvas. I taste that asa flour it has a bit of a nuttiness to it. This is really good. Oh my gosh this is so delicious and you know what else sometimes mine I think I'm overcooking mine because they turn out crisp and hard. You cooked these so gently that they didn't end up crispy they're just lovely and soft and pliable. Yeah you know yeah when you cook them really fast um they and you have all that water in the dough they stay really soft and they're like so perfect for picking this up. Oh my gosh Ami thank you so much for sharing this recipe with us um it was great to learn something new and see a little bit of an insight into another culture. Oh absolutely it was so much fun thanks for inviting me. Yeah you're welcome thank you. Thank you so much for watching stick around I have lots more videos for you to check out and I will see you back here again really soon. Bye.