Gluten Free Chapatti Flour, How To Make?
Wheat Free Chapatti Flour, How To Make It
Ved Gupta
This recipe comes from my niece in-law Mitun's mum, who lives in Himanchal Pradesh in India. She devised it when she was diagnosed with gluten intolerance.
Ingredients
Gluten Free Flour 1
2 cups millet flour or bajra atta
1 cup buckwheat flour or Kottu atta
1/2 cup kodra atta, a type of Indian millet
1/4 cup Bengal gram flour or besan
1/4 cup corn or maze flour
Gluten Free Flour 2
2 1/2 cups fine rice flour
1 cup potato starch /flour
1 cup tapioca or saboodana flour
1/2 cup chickpea flour/besan
1/2 cup buckwheat flour/kottu atta or millet flour /bajra atta
2 tbsp. gum resin (gond; or xanthan gum or guar gum, powder
Instructions
Make dough as normal, to the consistency that you like. Use tap water.
How to keep gluten free chapatties soft? Try following:
Leave the dough for approximately 10-15 minutes to 'prove', before you roll chapatties out. If you make dough immediately before making the chapatties, they tend to be stiffer.
If the dough is too firm, chapattis will get tough. Correct dough should be soft to touch and 'give' easily when pressed with a finger. The more experienced you become softer dough you can handle, resulting in softer chapatties.
When rolling out, roll from outside in reverse of whet chapatties), using a rotating action of the wrist. Chapatties should be very slightly thicker in the middle than on the periphery. This makes them balloon up better, which in turn keeps them soft.
The griddle pan or 'tava' should be heavy bottomed and quite hot but not burning hot, before you place your chapatti on it. Cold tava will make stiff chapatties.
When you cook chapatties, put them in a pile, one on top of other, immediately each one is cooked. Once finished, wrap the whole pile in an aluminium foil and then in a cloth towel. Some of my friends spread them out to cool. In my view, this hardens them.
I use tap water to make dough. In winters, when tap water is very cold, lukewarm water might help.
If you don't mind fat in your chapatties, smear a thin layer of ghee on each chapatti after it is cooked and before it is put on the pile. This also keeps them soft.
People in some regions of India routinely add a little oil/ghee to the dough. This is very optional. As a North Indian, I NEVER add oil to the dough. Softness of a chapatti has nothing to do with the oil in the dough in my view.
