Dosa – Indian-style Rice-Crepes

A dish for those who are keen to experiment and have some experience in baking pancakes. Make them out of rice, very thin and crunchy on top of it!

How to make Dosa

Put the rice and the lentils in two separate bowls, add water and let both ingredients soak the day before you want to prepare dosa. If you want to eat it for breakfast or lunch, it will be good to soak it already the morning before.

In the evening you can then pour out the water and put both, rice and lentils together in a strong grinder. Together with the cup of water you make a nice paste out of it which in the end should be about the consistency of honey. Give the paste into a bowl or pot that you place in a warm place over night. If it is cold in your home, wrap the pot in blankets or preheat the oven slightly, switch it off and place the pot inside it.

Until morning, the dough should have risen up noticeably. If it hasn’t, just place it in the warm sun or for a short time in the oven at low heat until is rises up.

When it has nicely risen, you can start baking the pancake-like dosas. For this purpose there are special pans for dosa which are completely flat. As a dosa is usually more than a foot long from one side to the other, these pans are just big plates that are heated from below. You can make smaller dosa, though, on a smaller, flat non-stick pan if you have. Heat it up on medium heat. Take a ladle, dip it in the dough and spread the dough in circles so that there is only a fine layer left on the pan which can get baked. The specialty of dosa is its thinness due to which it is possible to bake it through without having to turn it around. Take half a teaspoon of oil and make a complete outer circle around the dosa. Once the upper side of the dosa is baked, take a thin and long spatula to carefully separate it from the bottom of the pan. Take it out and roll it into its characteristic shape – once it is off the plate, it will soon get crunchy and stiff.

Enjoy it with some nice coconut chutney!