Flour power can make or break (literally) stuffed paratha

Aloo paratha, a stuffed whole-wheat flatbread, hails from northern India. At House of India in University City, proprietors Satish Kumar and Neelam Khurana serve up some of the most satisfying paratha in town. To offer my sincerest praise, I set out this month to duplicate their work. Traditionally, paratha is cooked on a tava, a concave cast-iron griddle; at House of India, it’s baked in a tandoor. I own neither tava nor tandoor, but my research said that a cast-iron skillet would fit the bill. The dough seemed simple enough as well: about 3 cups flour, a few tablespoons ghee (clarified butter) or oil for tenderness, a smidge of salt to enhance flavor and enough lukewarm water to bring the dough together. In the case of paratha, the flour of preference is chapati (sometimes called atta*), a finely milled, high-protein whole-wheat flour that looks a lot like refined cornmeal. Surely, I thought, replicating my restaurant-indulgence at home would be a no-brainer. Looking back now, I might have been less confident had I registered that very few recipes specified the quantity of water. Where the amount was indicated, it differed by as much as 50 percent for the same amount of flour. For my initial test, I blithely chose the low end (½ cup water), yet the dough was so dry it would not hold together. When I used the largest suggested quantity (¾ cup water), the dough could be formed into a ball, but with a lot of work. I rolled and cooked it anyway, only to find it rubbery and tough – not at all like the flaky, tender disks from House of India. Time to seek help. In this case, from an experienced local home cook named Jyoti Desai and cookbook author Raghavan Iyer. Both offered the same critique: I didn’t add enough water. “The dough needs to be quite soft so it can stretch and accommodate the filling,” Iyer explained. He described the optimal consistency as similar to supple pizza dough that moves easily when poked with a finger. Desai concurred: “The dough must be sticky enough that you have to dust with flour when you knead it.” But I wanted a formula – some basic ratios that would reduce this apparent art to science. Unfortunately, none of my sources could pin down an exact water quantity. Most work without a recipe and, as Iyer pointed out, “There is often a huge variation in water uptake from bag to bag, even within the same brand of flour.” Though he attributed this variability to inconsistent flour processing standards in India and to changes in humidity, I wasn’t convinced. Mind you, I did observe a difference in water absorption between brands. But both brands I used are milled in Canada, not India, and the amount of water they absorbed did not vary from day to day – even with our erratic Missouri weather. A better explanation for these differences relates to protein content. The higher the protein content, the more water needed to get the dough to the right texture. If you make flour substitutions, beware. Knowing the protein content of your flour is important for another reason. High-protein wheat flour generally has a high gluten content as well, which means it will yield a strong and elastic dough – one very easily rolled to the thinness (about 1∕8 to ¼-inch thick) required to make flaky paratha. As such, I caution against lower-protein flour substitutes. Along the way, I gleaned additional tips for making high-grade paratha. Among them: Let the dough rest 30 minutes after kneading so the gluten can relax. (A little downtime will allow you to roll the dough even thinner.) Make sure your filling is dry and not overly mashed. (A slippery filling makes it more difficult to roll paratha to the desired thickness.) And roll gently, coaxing the dough to as large a diameter as possible without any potatoes popping out. (You should see the filling through the dough, however.) My paratha weren’t as delicate as those at House of India, but they were tasty and their texture has greatly improved since I learned the importance of flour power. I’ll keep practicing, as some aspects of this art evidently cannot be reduced to science. *When choosing atta for paratha, be sure the package specifies whole-wheat (usually durum) flour.