I was born in an eastern India state called Bihar in 1986, as I can cherish when I began to know about food. The chapati in our dialect we say it “roti” or in English, it is called flatbread is a foremost food. Gone are the days when it was popular in a certain area. Now it is part of the cuisine in most of the places. (How to make chapati)
Since it is made in a different part of the states or country now, hence people make it with their choices to add some tastes. But I have been eating it since my childhood, and now I am married and my wife cooks it likewise as my mother used to make. She does not add anything to it. It is simply cooked with wheat flour, hence we can eat it in vegetables, dal (pulse) as well as milk.
For a novice, It is a really hard nut to crack to make chapati. It demands a lot of practice cooking it perfectly. But by making it daily, gradually it becomes easy to cook. Let’s shed light on its process to cook.
Wheat flour
As I have been teaching how to speak English effectively globally. Hence, I came to know that in many countries people do not know about it. Considering it here, I am going to attach a picture to make it more explicit.
Put the flour in an aluminum basin depending on how many chapatis you need to make. Here in the below picture of flour, my wife makes 16-17 chapati. Pour water on it a little and use knuckles to mix it. You can not pour much water at once. Hence, keep repeating it proportionately or keep adding water as the flour demands to make it dough pliable. This process is called kneading the dough. If you add more water as it needs, the dough is not going to be ready to make chapati. Hence, it comes by practice or doing it daily. Here I am attaching the steps one needs to go through to knead a dough.
Now the dough is ready to make chapati.
Start rolling the dough in a small ball shape, perfectly round, to make a chapati. Once the ball is round, then press it lightly between your palms to make it a little flat. Put it on a rolling board, nowadays, the smooth kitchen counter marble is used as a rolling board either. Start rolling it with the rolling pin. If you have rolled the dough ball around, the chapati will be round. While rolling with the rolling pin, the dough starts sticking. Have a little dry flour in a bowl to dip the dough in it to make it dry. It will help not to stick in the rolling board or pin.
Going further, the next step is to cook it. Put the round flatten the dough (disc) on the griddle. While rolling the dough, the griddle (pan) is already on the gas stove, hence it is already heated. Let it be on the griddle for a few seconds and flip it over the other side by tongs to be sure that it is baked on both sides. Let it leave for a few seconds to puff. Hence, the chapati is ready now to eat.
It depends as somebody puffs it directly on the stove flames whereas someone does it on the griddle or pan. I have tried to put all the processes explicitly and to make it visual I have attached a YouTube video.