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19 Comments

1. Interesting, I’ve never heard of this bread thanks for writing.

2. When I lived in India vendors would deliver it to the house on a daily basis. In the states it is almost impossible to find unless you have a family connection or live in a large city with an Indian community. Glad to hear you have conquered the recipe, as it is not as easy as you make in sound.

   1. The best dosa I’ve ever had was an onion dosa made by a chef who was born, raised, and trained in India. It was divine.

      1. Rava Dosa. It’s excellent when done well.

3. Interesting although I suspect any ferment benefit is lost when you bake the loaf.

   I suspect the mixture of beans, grain and fenugreek is the basis of the health benefit.

   I make kimchee in 5 gallon pails and it is my go to when I am feeling under the weather. When I have the “I Wanna DIE Flu” I make hot kimchee soup, essentially a bone broth chicken carcass soup with the raw kimchee added just before serving as not to kill off the ferments.

   I should perhaps just eat it daily 🙂

   “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

   ― Hippocrates

   1. The best dosas I have had from the best Indian chefs have been cooked on the outside but minimally cooked on the inside, hopefully preserving at least some of the benefits of fermentation.

      The mixture of beans and grain is a complete protein, and fenugreek definitely has some health benefits.

      I have made kimchi but my favorite is German style sauerkraut made with cabbage and caraway seeds.

4. What a fascinating recipe and process! Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with all of us. I probably won’t be purchasing a wet grinder, but I’ll be searching for other ways to make this bread without losing the nutritional benefits of it. There may not be an alternative method, but I am very interested!

   1. If you don’t have a wet grinder you will need a heavy duty blender, one with a motor that can grind the dough long enough to finish it without burning up, and with the capacity to hold enough dough to not have to make too many batches. Most blenders are designed to grind up stuff quickly, and the motors don’t have the required duty cycle to make dosa dough.

5. Thank you, EP!
   What a fun and unique contribution to the conversation about healthful cooking! We don’t yet have a wet grinder, but will look into this, and hope to try our hands at making this delicious bread one day soon!

   1. It takes a bit of work to make dosa, but I think the result is well worth the effort. When I grind the dough I make enough to last about 3 weeks, so it’s not something you have to do very often.

      1. Excellent tips, EP! I also very much appreciated the discussion of which kind of grinder is best for the process. The right kitchen tools — in addition to good technique — can make a tremendous difference in success of the outcome!

6. Pretty neat! Thanks for sharing. It sounds really healthy and tasty.

   1. I love dosa. My favorite is dosa with my wife’s chicken curry.

7. Hi E.P., very interesting article. Now we just need your naan recipe and we’ll be good to go. 🙂

   I’m anxious to try this and have a couple of questions. You mentioned using old rye but do old hard beans work with this as well?

   Since I probably won’t be buying a wet grinder anytime soon, I’d like to try this just grinding the beans in a regular grinder (or blender?) You mentioned the fibers get destroyed that way but are the fibers more about texture or do they affect the flavor as well?

   I have some recipes that use flour tortillas but I’ve never been a big fan of flour tortillas and it sounds like dosa could replace tortillas in some recipes?

   You also mentioned coconut chutney, that really sounds good too.

   Thanks again for the article.

8. Sorry I don’t have a naan recipe for you. Naan is totally different than dosa, being made from non-fermented dough made with wheat flour. The best naan is baked in a tandoor oven.

   I think you would have the same problems using old hard beans (depending on the size of the beans) that I did with navy beans. You have to be careful with the ratio of 3 parts grains to 2 parts beans. If you use more beans than grains in the dough you will have problems with it. It will probably want to stick to the pan when you cook it, and it will not hold together when you try to turn the dosa.

   You can certainly use a blender to make dosa dough. My wife did this for a while until we got our first wet grinder. The dough should taste the same but it will be more soupy because the fibers are shorter and it is harder to monitor the correct amount of water to use when making the dough in a blender. You need a heavy duty blender to make dosa dough (like a Vita-Mix).

   I don’t think using dosa to replace a tortilla would work very well, because a dosa is much more fragile. Naan or chappati would be a more suitable substitute.

   Coconut chutney, made by an Indian chef, is very good, especially with dosa.

   1. Hi E.P. thanks for the tips.

9. I love Dosa. One of my favorite foods. Thanks. We have lots of Indian markets here. Now I have to find room for grinders.

10. I toy with various sourdough starters, so will add this to my “to try” list. I found a whet grinder on Amazon, oof! $220 bucks. Might try a batch in my food processor first. Thanks!

11. Thanks for the information; these are a great addition to options for bread from storable foods. I do have one very serious concern: the key part of this for any survival-themed blog would seem to be how to make this efficiently in a grid-down situation. A couple of readers have already gently admitted that importing a 220-volt electrical appliance from India and retrofitting it to run on 110-volt AC isn’t in their future. I’d go further: while I appreciate the info and recipe, and have homemade these myself with an electric blender, I’ve long wondered how to translate this into efficient production without electric appliances. I have to think that this method, like my blender method, wouldn’t be much better as an emergency strategy than relying on Amazon to deliver food by drone after a disaster. Again, not to knock the good advice, but I have to wonder: there has to be a way people made these things all the time, efficiently enough for it to be a staple in impoverished communities, with no electric appliances. What is that way, I wonder.

    As for the benefits of fermentation, there is one which might apply regardless of the heat of subsequent cooking. Some kinds of beans (kidney and tepary, for example) have substances that block protein absorption, and can even lead to protein deficiency by blocking protein absorption even from other foods. Cooking can inactivate these substances, I have read. I’ve heard some theorizing that fermentation might accomplish the same thing. I don’t know, but think it might be a theory worth following up. Thanks for the info!

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