Cook with Arthy shama: Rumali roti/ Zero oil roti

Those soft, thin roti's you order at restaurant is not so tough to make at home.

Name originating from 'rumal' meaning Kerchief in Urdu is an combination of maida and wheat flour and is cooked on inverted griddle/tawa/kadaai. After cooking, these are folded in four and is served hot with sizzling mughalian curries. Here, I used lesser maida than original composition ie one parts of wheat flour with 1/4 part of maida. Rotis thus obtained were super-soft and much to my surprise stayed soft for more than six hours. And most interesting fact is that these are zero-oil rotis, so go ahead and give an try, for you are sure to get praised :)

All you need is 1 cup of wheat flour, 1/4 cup of maida, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp oil , extra wheat flour for dusting and water (as required)
The before said measurement yields 6 rotis and serves 2.

Take wheat flour, maida, salt in an vessel. Mix through and pouring water, knead them with oil-greased hands (so that dough doesn't stick to you after kneading) to an soft, sticky dough.

Rest them for ten to fifteen minutes. Take a lemon sized ball and start rolling them into thin, large roti by dusting them with more and more of wheat flour. Since your dough is sticky, dusting with flour is sure to give you an elastic, thin roti.

In your gas burner, invert ur usual roti tawa as pictured below and bring heat on high flame. Sprinkle salt water (so that roti doesn't stick to tawa) and proceed.

Place the dough over the centre and cook for two seconds. Turn them over and cook, you can see brown spots appearing. Next fold them vertically (as seen in bottom-left pic). Finally fold them other side too, so that it now resembles like kerchief folded four times, as picturized lastly. The entire process must be done quickly, say within ten seconds. You can use your hands or tongs. Furthur delay may harden the roti. But, don't worry with more and more practice, you are sure to get it right!!