Indian Paratha: Indian Bread Easy Recipes for the Hurry Home Cook

A paratha is a flatbread that originated in the Indian subcontinent. It is still prevalent throughout India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, where wheat is grown and is the traditional staple of the area. Paratha is an amalgamation of the words parat and atta which literally means layers of cooked dough. Alternative spellings and names include parantha, parauntha, prontha, parontay (in Punjabi), porota(in Bengali), palata (pronounced [pəlàtà]; in Burma), porotha (in Assamese), forota (in Sylheti), and farata (in Mauritius, Sri Lanka and the Maldives). In this book, the authors have laid out over 35 tantalizing paratha recipes from in and around India. Parathas are one of the most popular unleavened flat breads in the India part of the Indian Subcontinent and they are made by baking or cooking whole wheat dough on a tava, and finishing off with shallow frying. Parathas are thicker and more substantial than chapatis/rotis and this is either because, in the case of a plain paratha, they have been layered by coating with ghee or oil and folding repeatedly (much like the method used for puff pastry or some types of Turkish börek) using a laminated dough technique; or else because food ingredients such as mixed vegetables have been mixed in with the dough, such as potato and/or cauliflower, green beans and carrots.