Roti Canai

For the past few days, I have been doing extensive google research on making Roti Canai. For those who would like to know what this is, click here. It has been more pain than pleasure and I'm running out of plain flour. Anyway, I decided to update my blog with my roti canai adventures and hopefully get some feedback from those who have tried and succeeded! The recipe I first started off with a couple of days ago was from Kuali-Malaysia by Amy Beh. It came out pretty tough and not thin and crisp on the outside. It was decent though, edible; but still not authentic roti canai! I tried another recipe today which did not include milk; from Malaysianfood.net . As my skills in thinning the dough got better, I was able to make the roti this time with more layers and air trappings for a flakier and crisp roti. The second recipe gave a softer bread-like texture in the center when cooked but in my opinion, the first recipe from Kuali was more workable and tasted more canai-like. I had a few unsuccessful attempts to thin the dough by flipping it and stretching while spinning the dough (like how the mamak's in Malaysia do it) -click here, however, instead of the dough forming a larger circle, it kept shrinking while the corners overlapped each other. I finally decided to just stretch it on the counter with my fingers. The problem with learning to make roti canai is, the amount of dough you waste! After working with one ball of dough, it cant be re-kneaded and stretched out again; as it becomes tough and dry.(like this little penguin I shaped out of frustration). I wasted many many little balls of dough while trying to get the stretching method right. To those lucky ones back in Malaysia; don't take the Mamak roti canai for granted, it involves more than you think it does! An authentic plate of roti from a Malaysian mamak will never be the same for me.