Malaysian cuisine
Roti canai
A flatbread stretched translucent and crumpled before frying. The layers come from air rather than butter.
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Total
- 50 min
- Difficulty
- Takes practice
Ingredients
- Plain flour500 g
- Warm water280 ml
- Condensed milk2 tbsp
- Egg1
- Ghee or margarine120 g
- Neutral oil — for resting the dough150 ml
- Salt1 tsp
Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.
Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.
Method
- 1
Knead a dough from the flour, water, egg, condensed milk and salt for fifteen minutes, until it is very elastic and smooth.
18 min
- 2
Divide into balls, coat each in oil and set them in a bowl covered with more oil. Leave them at least four hours.
240 min
- 3
On an oiled surface flatten a ball and stretch it from the centre, slapping it with your palms until the sheet turns translucent.
5 min
- 4
Brush the sheet with ghee, fold the edges to the middle and coil it into a tight spiral. Let it sit ten minutes.
12 min
- 5
Flatten the spiral into a round and fry it on medium heat, two minutes a side in ghee, until it takes golden spots.
16 min
- 6
Straight from the pan, crumple the bread between your palms from both sides and the layers open. Serve with dhal or curry.
About the dish
The dough is stretched into the thinnest possible sheet, oiled and coiled into a spiral. Frying separates the layers with steam — the same principle as puff pastry, without a single sheet of butter.
The rest is long and not optional: the dough balls sit in oil for at least four hours, better overnight. The gluten relaxes and the sheet stretches instead of tearing.
The cooked bread is crumpled by hand right in the pan. That is not a flourish: the compression separates the layers and makes the roti airy inside.
Worth knowing
- — Oil on the table and hands, not flour. Flour makes the sheet dry and prone to tearing; oil lets it slide and stretch.
- — Holes while stretching do not matter: they close when the spiral is coiled. Only tearing the sheet clean in half is a problem.
- — The dough keeps in oil in the fridge for up to three days and only becomes more pliable.
Nutrition
Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.
- Calories
- 420 kcal
- Protein
- 8 g
- Fat
- 20 g
- Carbs
- 52 g
More from Malaysia
- Laksa lemak — Noodles in a coconut broth built on a rempah paste, with prawns and tofu. The paste is fried until the oil separates.