Dosa is our favorite breakfast/dinner item and most of our days start with crispy golden brown dosas – we are a family who heavily depend on our idlis and dosas for breakfast every morning. I have never ever had cereal for breakfast and even if I try, I would be chided by both mom and MIL. My refrigerator may or may not contain vegetables/fruits but is sure to have one dabba full of idli/dosa batter. On tired weekdays, dosa would be my savior which can be prepared in a jiffy.
Over the weekend, I tried Sponge Dosa that is more similar to Appam in texture but is completely different. I usually use cooked sago (saggu-biyyam/sabhu-dhana/javvarisi) in my appam batter to get fool proof spongy appams. Instead of following the same approach, I used flattened rice/poha while soaking the rice for the batter. As I planned on using the batter instantly, I used buttermilk to soak the rice which meant the ground batter had a tinge of tanginess even without fermentation. Also, I used the batter in less than an hour from grinding it, so used a pinch of cooking soda. If the batter is let to ferment, one can skip the soda I guess. The dosas turned out to be super soft and I served them with spicy coconut chutney but vegetable kurma would have been apt. Well, there is always a next time! 🙂
Recipe
What I used –
- Raw Rice, 2 cups
- Flattened Rice, 1 cup
- Urad Dal, ¼ cup
- Fenugreek Seeds, 1 tsp
- Buttermilk, 2 cups
- Cooking Soda, ½ teaspoon (optional)
- Salt, as required
- Water, as required
- Oil, as required
How I made –
- Soak raw rice, urad dal, flattened rice and fenugreek seeds in buttermilk for atleast 6 hrs.
- Grind the soaked mixture into a smooth paste. Add salt and mix well. The batter should be of pourable consistency. Set aside for an hour.
- If using immediately, add cooking soda and mix well.
- Heat dosa tawa and pour a ladle of the dosa batter. Do not spread too thin like ordinary dosa. The dosa should be atleast 1 cm in thickness after spreading. Srpinkle oil along the sides and cover with a lid. Cook on medium flame for about a minute.
- On removing the lid, the dosa would have a number of holes all over and the bottom should be golden brown.
- Remove dosa from the tawa and serve hot with chutney or sambar or kurma of your choice. Note: There is no need to cook this dosa on the other side.
srividhya
Looks so soft.. yum
chcooks
Thanks Sri 🙂
Kaj
I love thosai too. More common to have puttu and idiyappam for breakfast and dinner for us. Mom would make thosai once in a month or so.
Love the variety of thosais in India. Have never had sponge thosai. Would like to have authentic Mysore masala thosai someday. You are lucky to be in Bangalore. Some of the best online thosai videos are from there. Seems to be thosai capital.
Love the how mango pirni looks.
chcooks
Thanks Kaj! 🙂 Actually South India entirely is famous for Dosas - there are different variants in each city but idli or dosa you can find anywhere in South India 🙂
Prasad
Really looking very fine. mouth-watering! now I want to try your recipes
chcooks
Thank you so much 🙂
karyna
lovely ! what sort of rice is this ? I've been trying to make dosa with sona masoori rice, the rice is sort of dry and the dosa turn out very dry and crisp, white and not brown. I really prefer softer dosa. really appeciate your response.
Ramya
Thank you. You can use dosa rice (type of raw rice but it is not used for cooking rice) for softer dosa. Sona Masoori being raw rice, it will result in crispier/drier version of dosa. You can add 1 cup of parboiled rice too (idli rice). If you cant get parboiled rice, you can use 1/4 to 1/2 cup of poha while soaking the rice. That should yield softer dosas.
Harshitha Girish
Would that be okay if we soak the rice in buttermilk and also leave it to ferment?
chcooks
You can definitely try, but just make sure the buttermilk is not sour when you soak. Both rice and buttermilk can become too sour otherwise.