Layered Kerala porotta by Lakshmi Nair

From a wayside eatery to a swanky restaurant, porotta is an unmissable item in their menus. However, porotta is usually considered something that cannot be made at home as it involves complex steps and requires special skills to make it super soft and flaky.

Besides its great taste and texture, porotta is known for the unique way in which it is prepared. The dough is battered and beaten to make it soft and stretched into an unbelievably thin layer, which is almost transparent. However, the fun lies in watching the cook wave this thin layer of rolled dough in the air with a swift flick of his wrist.

Experts say that porotta gains its softness and flakiness from this action of waving it in air. Culinary expert and popular vlogger Lakshmi Nair, in the latest episode of her vlog, shows how delicious and soft porotta can be made at home without mastering the skill of waving it. Here's how you could make soft and layered porotta easily at home.

Ingredients
1 kg all-purpose flour
1 ½ tbsp sugar
1 egg
¾ tsp salt
2 tbsp refined oil
2 cups water + 4 tbsp

Preparation
Take the all purpose flour in a bowl and crack open an egg along with sugar, salt, refined oil and 2 cups water into a well made in the middle of it
Knead well into soft dough
It should have looser consistency than the dough made for chapathi
Add 4 tbps water and knead again
Set this dough aside for at least 4 hours
Before rolling the dough, keep some all-purpose flour and 1 ½ cups sunflower oil ready in separate bowls
Separate the dough in the bowl into two parts so that 10 sheets could be rolled from each part 
Scoop some dough and make balls with it
Sprinkle some all purpose flour on the kitchen counter top and roll the dough using a rolling pin into thin sheets
Pour 1-1 ½ tea spoons sunflower oil over the rolled sheet and sprinkle some all purpose flour as well
Roll another ball of dough, pour sunflower oil and sprinkle all-purpose flour and place this above the previous layer
Repeat rolling the sheets and stack them into two sections of 10 layers each
Pour sunflower oil over the topmost layer but do not sprinkle the all purpose flour
Cover these two sets of layers using a piece of clean cloth and set it aside for one and half hours
If the porotta is being made in an air-conditioned room or kitchen, switch off the AC while making it
Hold the edge of the top layer from a stack and slowly pull and stretch and fold this stretched dough into a coil
Pour some oil over the coil and stretch it using your hands into the shape of a porotta
Heat a non stick pan and cook each porotta until they are brown and nicely cooked
Make a stack of three cooked porotta and slap it nicely while it is still hot to make it extra soft and flaky
The layers break apart and become flaky only when the porotta is slapped when hot.