Punjabi & North Indian · Bread
Makki di Roti
- Advanced
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 300 g makki da atta (fine maize flour)
- 260 ml water at 70C (160F)
- 5 g salt
- 100 g mooli (white radish), grated and squeezed dry, optional
- 60 g white butter or ghee, to finish
Equipment
Grill · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Kneading doughSalting to draw the water out
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
- Mix the salt through the flour, then pour in the hot water in three goes, working it with the back of a spoon until the dough is cool enough to touch.
- Knead 5 minutes with the heel of the palm, folding in the mooli if using, until the dough is smooth and warm and takes a thumbprint without cracking at the rim; if it cracks, wet the palm and keep going. 5 min
- Take a ball the size of a lime and pat it flat between wet palms, turning it a quarter after every pat, until it is 12 cm across and 5 mm thick with an unbroken edge.
- Lay it on a tawa hot enough to make a water drop skitter, cook 2 minutes until the underside is freckled brown, turn it, then press the edges down with a folded cloth until it puffs. 2 min
- Finish it straight on the flame or coals for 20 seconds a side, until it blisters and smells toasted, then tear it open and load it with white butter.
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.
Salting to draw the water out 41 recipes
- Salted evenly over every surface rather than tipped on in one place and tossed once.
- Laid out so the water has somewhere to go: a colander, a rack, or a sieve over a bowl, never a flat dish where it sits back in what it gave up.
- Given real time, and there is visible liquid to show for it: a pool underneath, a drip, or a wrung handful.
- That liquid is removed. It is squeezed, blotted or poured away, and the food is dry to the touch before it goes anywhere near heat.
- The dish is seasoned knowing salt has already gone on, tasted before any more is added.
Where it goes wrong It went into the dish still wet, and was salted again out of habit. The water it was carrying dilutes and steams whatever it meets, so the result is watery and over-seasoned at once, and those are two faults that cannot be corrected in the same direction.
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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