Everybody knows how to make roti. Goan & Maharashtrian cuisine includes ‘Usali’. Knowing Little chemistry, will make them more nutritious.

Hello Readers,

Hope you have liked my earlier Kitchen chemistry post about How to stop onions to make you cry. If not then you should definitely have a look at it because its really fun to learn something in your kitchen while you cook everyday in this Lockdown situation , so that we make our lives more comfortable and remove dullness .

Water required for kneading flour is half the quantity of flour (by volume approximately). If you are using dough maker, put salt, little oil and flour and before adding water mix well. This allows air to mix with flour. Add water and make dough. Keep dough covered with moist linen for 30 minutes.

Softened flour, makes it more palatable breaks down some of their tough starches increases vitamin content. Phytic acid found in the bran of many grains prevents some of the nutrients calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc in the grain from being absorbed by our bodies. The soaking neutralizes this acid with help of phytase enzyme and makes absorption of Calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc available to be absorbed by the body. So your roti can give vitamins and nutrients along with carbohydrates if you soak the dough.

Knead it properly and then roll fulka. Roll gently because the water present in dough should be retained properly. When you put roti on tawa see that it is slightly brown. If little darker or for more time on tawa, water in it will evaporate and fulka will not puff. Turn on other side and then put on direct flame until it puffs. More the water retained more water vapours better puff. . Remember steam gives severe burns as compared to boiling water because both would exist at the same temperature, 100 C but the steam has additional 540 calories per gram (latent heat) and so be careful while putting fulka on flame.

USALI: Pulses hold an important place in human nutrition on account of their rich nutritional contribution to diets, particularly for proteins, essential minerals and vitamins, and dietary fiber. Benefits of pulse proteins may be limited by anti-nutrients and inhibitors. Germination can reduce the detrimental effect of these anti-nutritional factors and allow the full dietary benefits of cereal and pulse proteins to be realized. So sprouting of pulses helps in absorption of proteins, minerals and vitamins by the body.

Happy Learning and Cooking 🙂

Ref.: 1. A.Vashishth, Sewa Ram, and V. Beniwal Cereal phytases and their importance in improvement of micronutrients bioavailability, 3 Biotech. 2017 May; 7(1): 42.
2. G.Gebreegziabher, C. Chiremba, A. Stone, R. Tyler M. Nickerson The potential of germination (sprouting) for improving the nutritional properties of cereals and pulses, Review Cand. Food Business, 2020

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Author of this article is Vrinda Borkar.