The Bakery · Bread
Paratha
- Intermediate
- 1 h 30 m
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, char used as punctuation.
Ingredients
- 400g atta (chapati flour) or half whole wheat, half all-purpose
- ~220ml warm water; 1 tsp salt
- Ghee: for the dough, the layers, the pan, and philosophically
- Optional stuffing for another day: spiced potato (aloo), grated paneer
- A tawa or heavy flat pan
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
The words inside
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
- Knead a soft dough with a spoon of ghee; rest 30 min. 30 min
- Roll a round; brush with ghee; dust with flour (the release agent between layers); roll into a rope, coil into a snail, rest 10 min. 10 min
- Roll the coil flat again gently: the layers are inside now.
- Cook on the tawa: dry side one, flip, ghee the top, flip and press the edges with a cloth, rotating, until blistered gold. CRUSH lightly between palms to bloom the flakes.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Shaping by hand 85 recipes
- The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
- Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
- The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
- Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
- They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.
Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.
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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