Masaledar Dal Paratha - Spiced Indian flat Bread with Lentils

A soft Indian flat bread, delicious and perfect for eating your meal with your hands!

When we were in Frankfurt last week, we also brought home some chapati flour, which is very fine wheat flour, in order to make paratha at home. We discussed about which kind of paratha we should make and decided to bake Masaledar Dal Paratha, bread with spices and lentils in it which makes it soft and really nice.

How to bake Masaledar Dal Paratha

You start your preparations by boiling the Moong Dal with 2 ½ cups of water and a pint of salt in a pot. Cook it until the lentils are soft. When it is cooked, take the pot off the heat and let it cool down a bit.

Put the flour into a big bowl for the dough and add the dal. Take care now not to burn yourself because the lentils are probably still hot or very warm. Add the cumin and the garam masala as well as half a teaspoon of salt and two tablespoons of ghee. Mix this all well and knead the dough thoroughly.

You need to knead it well and when you think you are done, poke a finger into it. When you pull it out, the dough should come back up with your finger and quickly fill the hole it left. If it does, your dough is ready.

Form balls out of the dough and take one out, dip it from all sides into normal wheat flour so that it won’t stick to your board and then roll it out to a flat bread of about 5 mm height.

If you have a helper, he or she can already switch on a pan and bake the paratha while you roll out the rest of the balls. Your helper will first heat up the pan and then put the first paratha in. Let it get baked a bit on one side first, then turn it around and on the side which is now on top, you apply a bit of ghee and spread it over the complete paratha. Turn it again and do the same on the other side. Now it just needs some more heat from both sides, some turning and a little bit pressing on top of the paratha until it is nicely baked through.

When you have baked all your parathas, you have a great bread to eat for example with an Indian meal of rice, vegetables and lentils. Just tear pieces off your bread and eat with your hands. Try, it’s fun and you have direct contact with your food!