Dhapata Recipe

This is a spicy puri which is made from jowar, wheat and gram flour. This is one of my most favorite Maharashtrian recipe which goes very well with curd. Every time I go to my native during my holidays my mom definitely prepares this, My job is to spread the dough and make small puri sized dhapata and my mom does deep frying Hence I learned this recipe from my mom :)

                  The usual Thalipeeth which is done on Tava as explained earlier in my previous posts is most common and authentic kind. This is little bit different, we do deep fry in this. The procedure of kneading the dough is almost same, but the size of dhapata is smaller similar to puri. We can also prepare this with multi grain flour. We will see below the steps to prepare Dhapata.

Ingredients:

Wheat flour	1 ½ cup
Jowar flour	1 cup
Gram flour	1 cup
Salt	To taste
Oil	½  table spoon for kneading, and some for deep frying
Turmeric powder	3/4 tea spoon
Red chilli powder	1 tea spoon
Water	½ glass

 To Grind :

Green chilly	2
Garlic	8 flakes
Cumin seeds	1 tea spoon
Ajwain	½ tea spoon
Coriander	1 cup

Procedure:

1.       Grind the items listed in the ‘to grind’ section and keep aside.

2.       Take a mixing bowl add wheat flour, jowar flour, and gram flour, ground mixture, salt, turmeric powder, red chilli powder. Add water little amount at a time and mix all the flours and add ½ table spoon of oil little amount at a time and prepare smooth dough and keep it for rest covering it with a cotton cloth for 15 mins.

3.       Meanwhile keep oil in a frying pan for heating.

4.       Make bigger sized balls – orange size(bigger than that we usually take for chapatti/roti) dust little flour and roll out the dough into bigger circle.

5.       Take a circular shaped object with sharp edges (ex: cookies cutter), place the sharp edges over the spread dough and press. Take out the small circles of dough and deep fry them on a medium flame. (To make dhapata more puffy soon after placing dhapat in oil press it with slotted ladle so that it completely gets immersed in oil and after few seconds when it puffs flip it and fry on the other side)

6.       When the dough turns golden color take out and serve the dhapata with curd and shenga(groundnut) chutney  / you can also serve this with pickle.

Notes:

• The dough should not be too dry nor too sticky. Add little water and oil and knead it again so that it becomes smooth. If already too sticky then add little wheat flour, wheat flour acts as binding agent.
• Before starting for frying the dhapata check if the oil is heated properly by dropping small amount of dough in heating oil, if it comes up immediately and turns golden colored then you can confirm that oil is heated properly and start frying the dhapatas.
• Make sure that the dhapata circles are little thicker in size while you spread the dough, this will make the dhapata more puffy.