Puran Poli (Flatbread Rolled Thin Around a Sweet Lentil Paste)

Name: Puran Poli (Flatbread Rolled Thin Around a Sweet Lentil Paste)
Prep time: 1 h 30 min
Cook time: 1 h 15 min
Total time: 2 h 45 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Indian
Ingredients: 200 g chana dal (split chickpeas); 700 ml water; 200 g jaggery; 0.5 tsp ground cardamom; nutmeg; 200 g plain flour; 0.25 tsp ground turmeric; salt; 140 ml water; 60 ml neutral oil; rice flour; 4 tbsp ghee

A sweet flatbread from Maharashtra: split chickpeas cooked down with jaggery into a stiff paste, sealed inside a very soft dough and rolled out thin on top of that, then cooked on a griddle. Mauritius's dholl puri warns that a wet filling bursts under the pin and uses a dry crumb instead. Puran poli keeps the paste and changes the balance: the filling is cooked until it is as stiff as the dough, the dough is made soft with oil, and the two roll out as one.

Steps

Rinse the chana dal and boil it in 700ml water for 40-50 minutes, until a grain crushes easily between your fingers.
⏲ 45 min
Drain in a sieve for 10 minutes. Keep the water (see Variations). The more water left in the dal, the longer the next step takes.
⏲ 10 min
Put the dal and jaggery in a heavy pan over medium-low heat and stir without stopping. As the jaggery melts it goes wetter first, then steadily thicker. Stop when a spoon stood in the middle stays upright and the mass comes away from the sides of the pan: 15-20 minutes.
⏲ 18 min
While it is hot, push it through a sieve or mash it smooth and mix in the cardamom and nutmeg. Cool completely; it stiffens again as it cools.
Mix the flour, turmeric and salt with the water, a little at a time, to a dough softer than a chapati dough. Work in half the oil for 5 minutes, pour the rest over the top and leave 1 hour.
⏲ 60 min
Divide the dough and the puran into eight each. Each ball of puran is one and a half to two times the size of a ball of dough. Cup a piece of dough in your palm, set the puran in it, draw the edges up and pinch them shut, and pull off the excess dough at the top.
Dust lightly with rice flour and roll from the centre outward, turning it a little each time, to about 20cm. Many light passes, not one hard one.
Cook on a hot griddle over medium heat for just over a minute a side, turning when it is gold with brown spots.
⏲ 2 min 30 sec
Brush with ghee, fold, and serve with more ghee poured over.

Tips & Variations

Variations

Katachi amti: the water drained off in step 2, simmered with tamarind, jaggery and spices into a thin, sour soup. In Maharashtra it comes to the table with puran poli, so even the water the dal cooked in is eaten.
Other names: holige and obbattu in Karnataka, vedmi in Gujarat, boli in Tamil Nadu. Some regions add grated coconut.
Coconut puran: grated coconut and jaggery cooked down the same way instead of the dal. Coconut does not stiffen as readily as the dal, so it needs longer.
How it is eaten: with plenty of ghee poured over, or with warm milk or aamras, a mango purée.

Tips

It does what dholl puri says cannot be done. Dholl puri works the same dal the same way and says: "A wet paste would smear and burst under a rolling pin; a dry crumb only spreads." Its answer is to cool the dal and grate it into a crumb. Puran poli changes the other side. The filling is cooked down until it is as stiff as the dough, and the dough is made very soft with oil. When the two give equally under the pin they stretch together as one sheet, and the filling does not push through.
So dholl puri's sentence is not wrong. Puran by the time it is rolled is not a wet paste. What the rule is really about is not crumb versus paste but whether filling and dough are matched. Dholl puri gets there by drying its filling, puran poli by cooking it down.
The cooking-down is the whole filling. Daifuku notes that "bean paste has already been cooked down, which is why it causes no trouble", and here that reason carries all the way to the rolling pin. When the jaggery melts the mixture goes wetter first; stop there out of alarm and the filling comes through the dough. Go on until a spoon stands. The sugar firms again as it cools, which is why it is wrapped cold (what sugar does).
Both breads agree the dough must be soft. Dholl puri: "A stiff dough will not go to 2mm, and forced, the filling comes through." Puran poli works oil into the dough and leaves it an hour under more oil, so the gluten is relaxed when it has to stretch (dough and gluten).
There is more filling than dough. One and a half to two times the dough by size is usual. The finished bread is less a bread wrapped round a filling than a filling spread between two thin skins.
Light strokes, many of them. Roll from the centre out and turn a little each time. Where the filling shows through, roll that side less. If it tears, dust the gap and cook it anyway.