8 Mar 20
The other night I replaced one third of the chapatti flour in Rick Stein’s recipe with kamut flour. The rotli didn’t rise quite as well but tasted quite nice. I will try the same again but experiment with the heat level to get them to puff up more.
31 Jan 2018
Using bread flour makes the chapatti too chewy because of the gluten. Use plain flour.
8 Aug 2014
The recipe in Rick Stein’s India is the best: 250g chapatti flour, 1/2 tsp salt & 2 tbsp oil. Mum’s advice to knead the dough well also seems to help with the puffing up.
23 Mar 2014
Used only 3 tbsp of oil to 250g chapatti flour.
23 Nov 2012
As a Middle Eastern flavoured alternative, I made zatar bhakri. Made just like bhakri but with olive oil instead of groundnut and just 4 tsp zatar and 1 tsp (1.5 was far too much) salt as flavouring ingredients. You can sprinkle a little zatar on at the end as well. Or it may be better to leave it out of the dough altogether and just sprinkle it on at the end, to get more impact. This would probably be good served with greek yoghurt.
9 Nov 2012
Add 1/2 tsp of chilli powder (doubled the amount) and also 1/2 tsp lemon juice. It was too hot so perhaps 1/4 tsp plus a pinch more next time. I couldn’t detect the lemon juice at all so I’ll leave that out.
9 Nov 2012
Add 1/2 tsp of chilli powder (doubled the amount) and also 1/2 tsp lemon juice. It was too hot so perhaps 1/4 tsp plus a pinch more next time. I couldn’t detect the lemon juice at all so I’ll leave that out.
24 Jun 2012
To my mind, bhakri are chapattis but with flavourings added to the dough and cooked with oil instead of dry heat in order to produce a bread to be eaten in its own right rather than as an accompaniment. My mum made bhakri as a weekend breakfast or a snack.
I learned how to make both chapattis from my mother. She doesn’t use recipes for Indian cooking, just ‘asro’ which roughly translates to ‘an idea of quantity’ or ‘approximation’. So I was very glad to find a quantity guideline that works in Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escapes: 250g flour makes 12 small chapattis or 6 large ones. (It must be noted that the recipe in the book is quite wrong though: it omits oil in the dough.) I find that I need approximately 4 tbsp of flavourless oil and enough boiling water to make a soft and malleable but not sticky dough. The feel of the dough indicates the texture of the finished chapatti. Don’t add too much water at once otherwise the chapattis will have to be rolled out with the addition of lots of flour to prevent it sticking while rolling. Then the flour on the surface burns on the tavi.
For the bhakri I made today I added the following to 250g of brown bread flour:
1 1/2 tsp Bart garlic salt
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp red chilli powder
finely chopped fresh coriander
These dry ingredients were mixed into the flour thoroughly before a well was made in the centre. I then added the oil and them boiling water to make the dough. I cooked them on a tavi similar to chapattis but with about 1 tsp of oil put on the tavi before the bhakri. Ensure there is enough oil so that both sides get a decent coating.
I couldn’t detect much heat in the finished bhakri so perhaps I’ll up the chilli next time. And perhaps some chopped fresh mint and lemon juice too.