Tag Archives: chicken korma

Baking with Hot Bread Kitchen: Paratha

2 Replies

Welcome back to my (very) casual series, “Baking with Hot Bread Kitchen.” It has been exactly two years since my last post in this series, but I’m on maternity leave now and hope to delve further into the Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook before our mini human arrives. Last time in this series, I made tortillas de tiesto, feta-filled flatbreads from Latin America. Today I also went for a flatbread: paratha, a classic from South Asia. Read on for the experience…

Baking with Hot Bread Kitchen #9: Paratha

This recipe comes from The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook‘s section titled “Primordial Breads: Unleavened Flatbreads”. From this section, we’re already explored m’smen and chapati. Paratha is a rich, layered flatbread from the Indian subcontinent that Wikipedia tells us is traditionally served with breakfast. The cookbook says that “depending on the region, shapes and fillings can vary greatly.” These are a basic, layered-but-not-stuffed version of paratha.

Paratha

The paratha recipe has a short ingredients list; I decided to make half a recipe (8 instead of 16 flatbreads) for just F and me. Rice flour was the most out-of-the-ordinary ingredient but was easy to find at our local BioMarkt (organic supermarket). I wasn’t bothered to look for ghee in the international supermarket (full disclosure: I only thought of that just now, while writing!), so I used regular unsalted butter, which seemed to work fine.

Folding & rolling
Lovely layers

The paratha dough came together quickly in our newly-acquired stand mixer and, thanks to the addition of butter, it was soft, pliable, and easy to work with. After a couple of 30-minute resting periods, I commenced rolling, buttering, and folding each individual dough ball to build up the layers. (If anyone can advise me on how to roll a triangular piece of dough into a circle, I’d be much obliged. My paratha shapes were not particularly round or consistent.)

Grilling the paratha in a non-stick skillet – with more butter, of course! – was time consuming but not difficult. F and I tried a fresh one and declared them delicious. I loved the nutty flavor imparted by the whole wheat (wholemeal, for UK readers) flour. They tasted like a less dense but richer chapati. When asked to describe the paratha using three adjectives, F summed them up as “buttery, succulent, crisp.” I’d call that a success! The paratha are best eaten warm, although they developed a nice crispiness by the time we had them alongside chicken korma and roasted cauliflower for lunch.

Would I make these again? Absolutely.

Have you ever made paratha? What’s your favorite way to stuff and/or eat them?

———