Rachel
- May 25, 2019
- 3 min read

Paratha

Updated: Aug 18, 2019

An incredible flaky and buttery flatbread you'll want to serve with everything, not just curry! It's rich but not overpoweringly so. It's not difficult to make if you have some dough making experience, but it does take a while (but it's worth it!)

The recipe is here, and pictures of the process are below:

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour (420 g)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. vegetable/canola/sunflower oil
1 cup warm water (250 ml)
8 Tbsp. butter/ghee, melted and cooled until soft and spreadable

Directions:

Mix together the flour and salt in a medium sized bowl.
Add in the water and oil and mix by had until a dough forms. It will be sticky but place on a lightly floured surface and knead 5-7 minutes, washing your hands clean as necessary if they stick too much.
Roll into a ball, place in the bowl, and cover and rest 1 hour.
After 1 hour, cut the dough into 8 pieces. One at a time, roll one piece as thin as possible to ~ 10 inches x 14 inches. One thing that helps is gently stretching by hand. Use as little flour as possible. The dough stickiness actually helps with the stretching and shaping.
Brush ~ 1 Tbsp. butter onto the dough surface. Sprinkle with flour. Roll up into a coil. Then roll each end on the opposite direction into 2 coils (see pictures below.) Then place one coil on top of the other and press down to stick together. Place in a parchment lines container and repeat with the rest of the dough.
Once complete, rest 1 more hour in a container with parchment paper. If you need to layer the parathas use parchment paper in between because the dough is still sticky.
After 1 hour, roll one paratha out at a time on a floured surface until 3 mm thick or so (a 8 inch wide circle) with as little flour as necessary.
Fry in a non-stick pan on medium heat, about 3 minutes on each side until golden brown. Repeat with the rest of the paratha.
You can be done now, or you can lightly fry each paratha again in about 1 tsp. butter each (optional).
A helpful video that demonstrates how to make the paratha is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsvqqICSlDM

After mixing the salt and flour together

Before mixing the water and oil together into the dry ingredients & kneading.

After mixing the ingredients together and kneading for about 5-7 minutes.

Cover and rest 1 hour.

The dough after resting 1 hour. Looks about the same! Now time to cut and shape.

Cut the dough into 8 pieces.

Now I'll show the paratha-making process with one piece of dough:

One piece of dough. First I flatten by hand.

Roll the dough as big and as thin as you can. here it's about 10 inches wide and 14 inches long. It helps to gently stretch the dough by hand while doing this.

Spread about 1 Tbsp. softened butter over the surface.

Sprinkle the buttered surface with flour.

Then roll into a tight coil.

Shape the coil into two coils on opposite sides.

The fold one coil on top of the other and press down. Then repeat with the rest of the dough pieces.

Place the prepared dough into a parchment paper lined container, with parchment paper between each layer if necessary, since the dough is quite sticky. Rest 1 hour.