Loach Poori Recipe

Deep fried Indian flat bread made of Maida (All-purpose flour) and whole-milk yogurt (Dahi)

This is traditional bread from Punjab served with Cholay for breakfast. Loach means stretchy and elastic. The live culture in Dahi (Yogurt) adds to the elasticity. Sometimes, Loach is also pronounced as Luchi.

Ingredients

1. Maida (All Purpose Flour): 2 Cups
2. Salt: 1/8 teaspoon

3. Dahi (Yogurt) with live culture: 5 Tablespoons

4. Warm water (near 100ºF): 6 Tablespoons.

Melted Ghee for rolling

Method

Dough

1. Mix salt and flour.

2. Make a mound of flour. Make a well. Add warm water and start mixing dough and knead.

3. Add yogurt and continue kneading. If the dough is too sticky, add 1 Table spoon of flour. If the dough is too hard, add up to one Tablespoon of Dahi (one teaspoon at a time) to get the right consistency.

3. Gather dough in to a ball. Cover with damp kitchen towel or a plastic film. Let it rest about 2 hours at room temperature.

Rolling dough

We need to roll dough out to form a 4" diameter disc about the thickness of a Dime (10¢ coin). How you roll the dough will also determine whether the bread will puff up evenly or not.

1. Pinch dough to make one bread and form it into a ball. Now flatten it to form a patty about 2" round. This will guide you in maintaining the round shape when using the rolling pin. Always apply rolling pin from the middle of the patty to outside. It takes practice to roll out a round disc. If you are a novice, use a lid of coffee can and a sharp knife to form the round disc.

2. Always use rolling pin on one side of the dough. Do NOT turn the dough over and roll again, it is called re-rolling. Avoid re-rolling. If you look at the cross-section of a finished puffed flat bread, you will notice one side is thicker than the other side. The thinner side corresponds to the side which was in contact with the rolling pin. We will call it the skin surface.

Cooking

1. Preheat deep fryer to 350ºF.

2. Put the bread with skin surface over the hot oil. With a skimmer, splash some hot oil over the top of the bread. Cook about 40 seconds.

3. Turn over the bread with the skimmer. Rub the to of the bread with the skimmer. It helps puff up bread with steam. Cook one minute.

4. Cook till both sides are brown of each Poori.

Yogi's Notes

The dough is a bit stiffer than the dough used to make Roti, so we have added only 11 Tablespoons of total fluids (water and yogurt) than 12 Tablespoons needed to make Roti.