Soft Whole Wheat Skillet Breads (chapatti)

Mix flour and salt in medium bowl. Make well in center and add
water. Mix with hand or spoon until you can gather it together into a
dough; add more flour or water if needed to make kneadable dough.
Turn out onto lightly floured bread board and knead 8-10 minutes.
Cover with plastic wrap and let stand 1/2-2 hours.

Divide dough into 1 piece per chapatti and flatten each with lightly
floured fingers. Then roll each piece out to 8″ round. Roll out each
bread without flipping it over; lightly flour bread board as
necessary to keep bread from sticking. Cover finished breads with
plastic wrap as you roll out the rest. Don’t stack rolled-out
breads; if you don’t have enough counter space, roll out just a few
at a time and begin cooking, then roll out the rest as the breads
cook.

Heat tava or cast-iron griddle or skillet over medium-high heat. When
griddle is hot, place a chapatti on the griddle, top side down. Cook
10 seconds, then gently flip over. Cook on second side until small
bubbles begin to form, approxinately 1 minute. Turn chapatti back to
first side and cook 1 minute longer; at this stage, a perfectly made
chapatti should start to balloon. This process can be helped along
by gently pressing on the bread. (We find the easiest method is to
use a small cotton cloth or paper towel, wadded up, to protect your
fingertips from the hot bread.) Gently press down on a large bubble
in the bread, forcing the bubble to expand. If bread starts to burn
on the bottom before it has ballooned, move chapatti with cloth or
paper towel in griddle, dislodging it from the point at which it is
beginning to burn. Remove finished chapatti from griddle and wrap in
clean towel to keep warm and soft. Cook remaining breads, stacking on
top of one another.

Authors’ comments: Making chapattis can be very relaxing. In quite a
short time, you can produce 8 or 10 breads, each one turning out a
little bit different from the others, but all of them attractive,
nutritious, and good. We’ve grown so accustomed to making chapattis
that they now feel almost like a convenience food. A household
staple of the best kind. Chapattis are traditionally baked on a
cast-iron plate called a tava. If you have a tava, use it. Otherwise,
use a cast-iron griddle or skillet. Chapatti-making can be an
ongoing, everchanging process. Each griddle is different. Flours are
different. What works well one day doesn’t seem to work as perfectly
the next. But whatever happens, your chapattis, ballooned or not,
will be good to eat and satisfying and quick to make.

Sylvia’s comments: this worked exactly as described! As always, I
had the breadmaker mix up the dough and let it rest in there until I
was ready to roll them out. The bubbles formed as advertised, they
cooked fine and puffed up in my cast-iron pan, and my daughter’s face
lit up as she said “These don’t taste like nothing, they taste
GREAT!” They are very forgiving to cook, a few times I forgot to flip
them after 10 seconds but they cooked perfectly anyway. The only
substitution I made was to use regular all-purpose flour instead of
atta flour, which I don’t like the taste of. The only change I’ll
make next time is to double the recipe, the four of us ran out of
chapattis before we ran out of hunger!

Glen Jamieson’s comments on FIDO Cooking echo: We found that the
underpowered halogen stove was quite incapable of heating a heavy
frying pan anywhere near hot enough to cook them. The final solution
was to cook the chapattis directly on the glass surface over the
stove element. Although not as controllable as we would have liked,
with the thermostat switching it on and off, it produced quite
reasonable results. Chapattis can be reheated successfully in a
microwave, and, if thick enough to be split like pita, can be filled
with all sorts of dal or other sauces for a delicious breakfast.

Nutritional Information per serving: xx calories, xx gm protein, xx
gm carbohydrate, xx gm fat, x% Calories from fat, x mg chol, xx mg
sodium, x g dietary fiber