Guide to making the perfect Bengali Luchi
A festive treat, luchi is a popular deep-fried bread made with just three ingredients
Luchi is a deep-fried bread, made of all-purpose flour (maida), popular in West Bengal. Here is a step-by-step guide to perfecting this dish. My husband often shares this anecdote, apparently the zamindars in West bengal (community of landowners) only ate the centre, softest part of a Luchi and discarded the crust around it.
In a bowl take 260 grams of flour and add vegetable oil to it
2. Mix the flour and oil well. This is an important step because now the oil will get mixed with the flour to give us a bread-like consistency.
3. Keep mixing it for a couple of minutes until you are able to grab a handul of dough, press it and achieve a consistency as shown below. Mixing with oil does the job of holding the flour together.
4. Start adding water to begin kneading. But remember to add water littlt by little, or else the dough will become soggy. We have to make the dough soft and not soggy.
5. Begin kneading and make sure you mix the flour really well. This ensures the water and flour bind well.
Tip: place a cotton cloth beneath the bowl, so that the bowl is gripped well allowing you to knead conveniently.
6. Once the flour starts to bind, small clusters of dough on the sides of the bowl will start rolling into the bigger dough ball. Once the dough is ready, cover it with a cotton cloth and set it aside for 7 to 10 minutes.
Step 7. Remove the cloth and press the dough into a two-inch-thick rope, then divide them into equal-sized balls. See images below.
8. Roll a ball into a perfect circle and press it flat inbetween your palms as shown in the image below
Step 9. Simultaneously, place a frying pan filled with oil onto the gas on a high flame. Next, place the flattened dough on a flat surface and start rolling it out. Continue to do so till it is about 1.5 centimetre thick. Swipe the images below to see.
Tip: You can dab oil onto the dough balls before rolling it on the rolling surface to prevent it from sticking
Step 10. Carefully collect the flattened dough and dip it in the oil. The luchi will now submerge and bubbles begin to form around it. This means the oil is at the right temeprature to fry (high flame).
A popular way of eating luchi as a savoury is by dipping it in salt with every bite.
Serve hot with Bengali chicken korma. Read the recipe for korma here
Tip: For a smaller quantity - every 65 grams all purpose-flour (maida) use 1 teaspoon oil. This will yield four luchis.
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