Bengali · Bread
Luchi
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 300g maida (refined white flour)
- 40g ghee, soft, for the moyan
- 0.75 tsp salt
- 150ml lukewarm water
- 700ml refined oil or ghee, for frying
The skills inside
Kneading doughDeep fryingDraining fried food: a rack, never paperResting dough: the pause that does the workRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the ghee into the flour and salt with your fingertips until the mixture looks like damp sand and holds its shape when squeezed in a fist.
- Work in the water in stages and knead 5 minutes to a dough noticeably firmer than chapati dough, smooth and tight. Smear the surface with oil, cover, and rest 30 minutes. 5 min
- Divide into 16 balls and roll each into a 10cm disc of even thickness, using a smear of oil on the board rather than a dusting of flour.
- Bring the frying oil to 190C (375F), the point where a scrap of dough surfaces in two seconds. Slide a luchi in and press its centre gently under with the back of a slotted spoon until it balloons, about 10 seconds.
- Flip it, give it 10 seconds more, and lift it out while it is still puffed and pale. A browned luchi is an overcooked one. Drain them standing on edge.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
Kneading dough 57 recipes
- The work changed it: what began shaggy and rough is one smooth, cohesive mass, with nothing raggy hanging off it.
- The surface has gone satin and barely tacky, releasing cleanly from hands and board instead of leaving a trail.
- Worked to the point this dough asks for and no further: springy and elastic where structure is wanted, just brought together where tenderness is.
- Torn or cut open, the inside is uniform: no dry streaks, no unmixed pockets, no core of flour that never met the water.
- After its rest it rolls and shapes without snapping back. A dough that fights the pin needed more rest, not more force.
Where it goes wrong Sticking was fought with flour instead of technique or patience, stroke after stroke, until the dough had taken in far more than the formula asked; it turns tight and dry under the hands, and bakes dense however well everything else goes.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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