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Dosa
Paper-thin, fermented rice pancake
👨🍳 Pro🌅 Breakfast🌿 Vegan🕓 750 min
Rice and urad dal are soaked, ground and left to ferment overnight. The fermentation isn’t a side detail, it is the dish: it turns the batter sour, airy and crisp enough to cook thin. It needs warmth and cannot be rushed.
👨🍳 Pro: Fermenting, deep-frying or layering. Needs time, patience and a quiet afternoon.
Prep720 min
Cook time30 min
Total750 min
Servesabout 12 dosas
Allergens: None of the 14 EU-declarable allergens, as this recipe is written.
Store-bought ingredients may carry traces — please check the packet.
Ingredients
0 of 5✅ All set to cook!
Method
0 of 8🎉 All done — enjoy!
- Soak the rice in water for 5 hours. Separately, soak the urad dal and methi for 5 hours as well.
- Drain the urad dal and blend it with a little cold water until very fine and airy — 4–5 minutes. It should turn white and foamy and roughly triple in volume. Transfer to a large bowl.
- Drain the rice and blend it with a little water until fine, a slight semolina-like grain can remain. Add it to the urad dal.
- Add the salt and mix it in by HAND — 2 minutes. The warmth and bacteria from your hand start the fermentation; a spoon won’t do that.
- Cover and let rise in a warm spot (26–30°C) for 8–12 hours. It is ready when the volume has nearly doubled, it is full of little bubbles, and it smells pleasantly sour.
- To cook, thin it with a little water to the consistency of a thin pancake batter.
- Heat a pan to medium. Pour a ladleful of batter into the center and spread it thin in a spiral from the inside out using the bottom of the ladle. Drizzle oil around the edge.
- Cook 2–3 minutes, until the underside is golden and crisp and the edge lifts. Do not flip — fold it over and serve.
Tips
- The point of no return is the fermentation. Too cold, and it never happens; too long, and the batter turns sharply sour. In a German winter: an oven with just the light switched on is enough.
- Grind the urad dal and rice separately. Ground together, the batter loses its lightness.
- The first dosa always fails, and its job is to season the pan. That is expected in India too.
- The batter keeps 4–5 days in the fridge and gets more sour every day — the older batter is what you turn into uttapam.
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