Porotta (Layered Flatbread)

Ingredients

• 500 Grams Flour
• 1 Tablespoon Butter
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 300 ml Coconut oil or refined oil
• Water

Instructions

1. Sift the flour into a bowl and mix in the butter and salt well. Add water and knead into a single dough. Shape into balls slightly larger than usual chapati-dough balls — 500g of flour makes 8 porottas. Coat the balls with coconut oil or refined oil and let rest for 30 minutes; the same oil can be used later for spreading the porottas. On a large board brushed with oil, stretch each ball out very thin — like a piece of cloth, about a foot long. Pleat this thin sheet the way you'd pleat a saree into small folds, then coil both ends inward and stack them one on top of the other. Once all the porottas are shaped this way, heat a dosa griddle. Take each coiled piece and flatten it gently by hand without losing the coiled pleats, then place it on the griddle without oil and cook on low heat; set aside once done. Porottas prepared this way keep well for up to 2 days without spoiling — store them in the fridge in an airtight polythene bag and use as needed. These dry, griddle-cooked porottas can also be puffed like a poori: heat plenty of oil in a deep pan and deep-fry them to get a puffed result. Cooking the porotta twice this way — once dry on the griddle, then again in oil — cooks the inside through and makes it more flavorful.