Dosai time!

After three years of mostly failures, the dosa batter finally came out right tonight! They came out nice and light and crispy, with a slightly sour tang. Avinash had made some onion sambar earlier, and we had the traditional dosai / sambar meal - though not at the traditional breakfast-time.



The perfect combination of factors appears to be
1) Sumeet Mixie to grind soaked urad dal and rice flour to correct batter consistancy
2) Let ferment in steel bowl for 48 hours at 54-64 degrees F (room temp in our house this time of year). The heating pad, putting in a recently-extinguished oven, putting bowl in the sun, next to the fireplace, etc, etc has not worked well for us.
3) Do not cover. I've been covering the batter all these years and maybe that's why it hasn't fermented properly. Unfermented batter is very sticky and doesn't want to come off the griddle properly. Our batter has never risen much, because of the cold, but it does seem to ferment alright anyway after a couple of days. Perhaps our wild Wisconsin yeast do not divide very fast. ;)
4) Grease cast-iron griddle with a halved onion. The griddle should be hot; the non-stick griddle doesn't make nice dosai.

Here we are making this South Indian specialty. Next week, maybe we'll try uttappam.