[Anupy] When most people think of Indian bread they only think of naan, but there's so much more to explore.

On today's show we'll make a couple of varieties of roti or flatbread.

All that and more coming up on Indian As Apple Pie.

I'm Anupy Singla, cookbook author and journalist.

I was born in North India and raised in Pennsylvania, with a foot in both cultures.

Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, I learned English from "Sesame Street," and Indian cooking from my grandfather.

Homemade Indian food always brought our family together.

It's why I'm so passionate about preserving our culture and recipes, so that everyone can learn how to make delicious Indian food at home.

This is "Indian as Apple Pie."

[announcer] This program is made possible by... Leysin American School hosts summer camps for students of all ages in scenic Switzerland.

Golden country Oriental food.

BMO Bank.

Al Sahara.

Handmade rugs.

When most people think about Indian bread they first think about naan: soft, fluffy, and cold charred in parts.

It is absolutely delicious.

But naan is a leavened bread made traditionally in a tandoori clay oven that gets upwards of 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

Who do you know that has one of those in their home?

The true workhorse in Indian bread in homes is actually roti.

Roti is a flatbread made from whole wheat flour.

And when you lock in that basic recipe it opens you up to so many possibilities, to so many other breads.

Today I want to help you get started on your journey of Indian bread making.

I am so excited to teach you how to make roti.

We're going to start with the flour.

That's most important.

It's actually called chapati flour made from stone ground germ wheat.

While it's whole wheat, look at the color.

It's really light.

The wheat is light in color as well.

That's why we like it, and it makes lighter rotis.

We're going to make our dough from the flour with just basically two simple ingredients, the flour and water.

You could add some oil if you wanted.

You could add some salt if you wanted, but I don't.

I want my roti to be very simple.

So, we're going to add those to a mixer.

You could also do it by hand.

I just want to show you how easy it is to get it in here, and get it to the right consistency.

So, the question is, how much flour?

How much water?

I tend to gravitate towards three cups of flour because that makes enough to feed my family with a little bit of leftovers, but not so much that I feel overwhelmed.

I also like with that three cups about a cup and a half of water.

I kept a little bit of extra in here because you might need a little bit more.

And just add it slowly.

We will start the mixer on low until all of this starts to come together.

See how this dough is soft, but you can make a shape out of it.

That's the consistency that you want.

The idea is that it should look like a pizza dough.

This doesn't have any yeast in it, right?

So, it's a flatbread, essentially.

It doesn't really have to rest.

It doesn't have to rise.

Now, keep in mind that the more I mix it, or the more I knead it, the better the roti, the fluffier, because as you knead it, you get all of those air pockets in there that help that gluten expand when you go to cook it.

Let's pull this mound of dough out of here.

It looks amazing.

Just a little sticky, so I always like to have a little dry flour here so you can sprinkle it on, and just go in and knead it again.

Look how beautiful that is.

And now we can pull off small amounts to make our roti.

Now, there are tricks to making really good roti.

The first comes in how you roll that small, it's called a peda, how you roll that.

I want it to be a little sticky, but not too much, so I'm going to grab a little bit more dry flour.

And what I like to do, my grandmother taught me this, just get your thumb in there as you're rolling it, because it will just make it nice and smooth.

See how beautifully round that is?

That's what we want because the rounder we get this peda, the rounder our roti will be later.

But there's another trick that I want to teach you that not everybody does, and my grandmother taught me this.

Let's get a head start on it.

We always have some dry flour here to dip, and we're going to take this in our hands like this and here we go.

We've got our head start, so now let's roll it out.

I was raised to make roti really thin.

There's some people, like in my husband's house, my mother-in-law makes really thick rotis, but we like them super beautifully thin because when we cook them, and now we're going to pat off that extra flour, then they'll pop up with that air so much easier.

Now that we're done rolling our roti out, we're going to cook it up.

And I want to turn my stove on, get my pan heated up.

As I do that, I also want to talk about what kind of pan to use.

Traditionally, we like to use what's called a Tava.

It looks like this, and it's a really thin piece of metal.

It's just perfect for cooking roti.

But you don't absolutely have to have something like this.

You can use a basic skillet, and sometimes I kind of prefer that because it's heavier and it really retains all that heat.

And I'll show you why that's going to be important as we cook these up.

And as we look to our roti, let's start on this end.

Do you see how there's some dry flour on it?

And that's okay because we needed dry flour.

But too much of it means when we go to cook it, it's going to be heavy.

It's going to just cook on there as a layer.

So, let's kind of get that off by just patting the roti on both hands, and you'll see that flour drop to the pan.

Our pan feels hot enough, so now let's go ahead and gently put the roti in.

What I like to do is just let it sit for a moment, not very long, 30 seconds, 40 seconds.

But as we see how we've got just a little bit of cooking started, and it feels now like it's pulling off that pan okay.

So, let's go ahead and flip it again.

Now, here's some brown spots.

That's what we want.

It's starting to really cook.

And here's the napkin trick.

You can grab a paper towel if you want.

I just like a little clean dish cloth.

It's nice and thin, and I roll it up like this.

And as we start to see that roti pulling up, we're going to go ahead and press it down in the areas that it pops up just a little bit.

That will help our roti cook through.

And this is helping that air get into all those pockets.

But it's not quite there until I really show you my magic trick.

Watch this.

We're going to move the pan to a back burner.

It's not on.

And now we're going to see where we end up.

On an open flame.

Look at this.

Keep it moving because we don't want it to burn.

So, you see.

And that's it.

Now, while these are delicious, we want to take them to another level, and you'll do that with a little bit of butter or ghee.

And there's a trick to this as well.

We'll grab this warm one, and we'll take just a little bit.

We always like to crumble it a little bit.

And either serve it right away, or if you want to stack them, you're going to take this, the butter or ghee side, facing the butter, or ghee side, and you'll just match them, so they'll just stack like that.

So, the top that doesn't have the butter will never touch the next set.

And they are absolutely delicious, but what I want to show you is how you can take this basic roti and take it to another level by stuffing it.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

It's called a parantha.

So, we're going to make even more magic from just this basic roti recipe.

Potatoes are aloo in Hindi, and they are really great stuffing for Indian bread.

I mean, who can resist flour and potatoes?

There's so many different cuisines around the world that combine the two, and that's what we're going to do today.

We're making this recipe, which is going to be a stuffed spicy potato filling for our Indian bread, and then it takes our roti to a whole other level.

Now, on my potatoes, I like to boil them with the skin on because they get a little less mushy that way.

There're still get soft enough that we can cook with them, but I like that they're not so mushy.

And once they're cool, really simple to peel away.

To peel like that.

This is going to be the fun part.

We're going to grab a large tray.

I like to use a stainless steel thali.

They have sides to them, but anything will do.

And then I want to pick up a box grater.

Grab the larger hole side, and start grating.

You're essentially ricing your potato.

There you go.

I'm just going sideways on these holes.

Never down of course.

But sideways, so I get all of that potato.

I don't waste anything, but I don't hurt myself.

And then we're going to pull this up and let all of that potato fall through.

You see that we've got a blank slate.

There are so many things that we can do with potatoes.

First, let's get our fresh ingredients in.

We want to chop up some onion.

I've got a medium yellow onion.

I like some heat, so we'll mince a couple of Thai chilis as well.

Then add a tablespoon of ginger that's been finely ground in a food processor.

We are now ready to spice, and we're going to use some of our really interesting spices, but start with one that you know very well: salt.

We can't live without our salt.

So, let's go basic white salt, and we'll sprinkle this in.

A tablespoon of coriander powder goes in next, followed by a tablespoon and a half of garam masala.

Now let's go for our amchur powder.

Amchur powder is dried mango powder, very tart mangoes that are dried and ground down.

What this does, it just adds this beautiful tartness to your stuffing.

Add two teaspoons of red chili powder or cayenne for some more heat.

Along with two teaspoons of ajwain, also called carom seeds.

Now we have our kasoori methi, dried fenugreek leaves, a very Punjabi Indian addition to our breads.

We love this in our breads.

And the way to get the maximum flavor out of this is take a bunch and just give it a squeeze, like a little hug, and all of that flavor is going to just burst out.

So good.

It is so delicious in this aloo parantha.

Our last ingredient is a very special one.

This is dried pomegranate seed.

They are what you'd imagine, chunky little pomegranate seeds.

And I'm going to get my mortar and pestle and just grind it down a little bit.

Alright, look at that.

This is your unexpected pop.

Now, we'll add this to our potatoes.

Looks amazing, right?

There's just so much in there.

I like to go in there with my hands because then I can feel for any kind of lumps of potato and break it down a little bit.

This is why you also want a dish that has that rim around it, right, so you can just have fun with it.

We're now pushing this down, making sure all of the little potato pieces are covered in spice.

How can they not be?

We have so much in there.

We are now done with this beautiful filling for our parantha, and we are ready to stuff them.

I can't wait to show you how simple dough combined with simple potatoes, and someone would say mashed potatoes, that are just spiced right, can make such an amazing combination as parantha, okay?

So, let's start filling this up.

Now, the dough starts off like a roti, so we're going to pull off a bunch of dough, but this is going to be a little bit larger than we did for roti because it needs to hold all of this filling.

But we're going to go ahead and roll it.

A beautiful peda or ball.

Our trick with the hands to get it nice and round.

That's our head start.

Now, the first trick on this is to roll this out so that you have a mini roti.

About that big, right?

That's going to hold all of our stuffing.

So, we're just go ahead and grab a large spoonful.

So, we're just going to now lock in all of that flavor by folding our dough over.

We're going to fold one side over.

The next flap is going over, and then we're going to go ahead and take this side, flap that over like that, and look at this.

It kind of looks like squarish, and that's okay.

The key though now is get some dry flour on this so we can roll it out.

See that crease right there?

We're going to put this on the bottom because we want that to really sink in and really disappear for us.

And as we roll this, we see some of the potato coming through, but not much.

We want to see it because that just means that our parantha is thin enough that we'll be able to get all that flavor oozing out without a lot of doughiness.

Look how delicately we've got the potato in there, and that's what you want.

It's just kind of like a wrap.

And now we're going to go ahead and set it in our pan.

This is a skillet.

It's been warming over here, and it's very dry.

There's no water.

There's no oil yet.

So, we want to give our dough a chance to start cooking.

So, now we've got that initial cooking done, we're going to flip.

I've got a vegetable oil here.

I'll take a little bit, pour it in.

With the back of this spoon, just cover it, and as we do that we will grab a spatula and flip it.

So, while on roti, we want it really dry until the very end, on this we know the stuffing is going to prevent the dough from popping open.

We're not going to have that same sort of wow moment, and we're okay with it because this has got stuffing in it.

It's going to be a meal, essentially.

Look how beautifully that browned.

And you've got now the potato smell of those spices coming through.

The potatoes are already cooked right, so you're not doing much cooking at this point for the stuffing.

You're just heating the dough through so it doesn't feel uncooked when you go to break this apart and eat it.

And then we'll take just a little oil and go around.

And then all those sides will beautifully brown so that we cook everything through.

And that's really it.

We're going to now put this one to the side and keep making more.

Now before we go to eat them, I want to warm them up again.

I'll tell you why in a moment.

It will become very clear.

You will understand exactly why.

And I also want to mix up some yogurt with a little sugar.

Normally, we like our yogurts savory.

In this case, I grew up with just a little bit of sugar in my yogurt because we really like that savory sweet combination with the parantha, especially if we're going to eat it for breakfast.

And just a little bit goes a long way.

That's enough.

They smell so delicious.

Can't wait.

Now that it's warmed up, we're just going to put it on a plate.

And then, here's my favorite part.

I'm not going to lie, I really enjoy butter.

And then there it is.

You see how that butter just melts down.

Yes, you can be civilized and use a fork, but it's just so fun to use your hands.

I love to get in here and get it ready for a delicious bite.

And all we do is, we tear off a piece, dip it a little bit more in that butter.

If you want, you can serve it with some achaar, a spicy pickle on the side.

Take a dip.

Wow, that one bite brings back so many memories.

And I hope this recipe helps you do the same for your family.

You're really going to enjoy these paranthas.

The butter, the yogurt, is just a great combination.

[Anupy] I'm all about making Indian cuisine more accessible.

Visit Indianasapplepie.com for more healthy, flavorful recipes, cooking tips, and much more, all rooted in tradition and simplified for our busy lives.

[announcer] This program is made possible by... Leysin American School hosts summer camps for students of all ages in scenic Switzerland.

Golden country Oriental food.

BMO Bank.

Al Sahara.

Handmade rugs.