Dal Bafla

If you have ever visited Rajasthan, chances are, you have stumbled upon the ever-so-popular Dal Baati Churma, a platter of Dal (lentil soup), Baati (hardened dough balls) and Churma (a fine powder made of wheat, semolina and millet flour) at least once during your visit. Dal Bafla is the lesser-known sister of this Rajasthani delicacy.

The key difference between Dal Baati Choorma and Dal Bafla is the texture of the bread. In the case of Baati, a stiff dough is made with wheat flour and semolina and separated into balls. These balls are then directly roasted inside the tandoor. What comes out is a crumbly ball that resembles a Besan Laddoo.

Conversely, the dough for Bafla is softer and more pliable because of the addition of a generous dollop of ghee to it. The dough is then boiled in water. This ensures that it swells up in size and becomes much more tender than the Baati dough. It is then chucked inside the tandoor and cooked at a 200 degree-Celsius temperature. This tandoor is fuelled by cow dung, which controls the flame from becoming too high and risking the dough to char on the outside and remain raw on the inside.

The Dal is the same for both preparations, made with a mix of different lentils, such as toor, urad, chana, moong and moth.

While Dal Bafla may have been a result of a successful kitchen experiment, not much is known about the origin of this variant of Dal Baati. However, Dal Baati itself has a very fascinating story surrounding its creation. History traces the birth of Dal Baati to the 8th century when Bappa Rawal founded Rajasthan’s Mewar. He was the ruler of a nomadic tribe and his soldiers would consume Dal Baati as a meal during wartime. Legend has it that the soldiers would bury wheat dough balls in the sand before they headed to the wars. By the time they would return, the dough balls would have been perfectly roasted in the desert heat. They would then lather these balls with ghee and eat them with a side of yoghurt.

The reason for eating the dough-balls instead of making them into thinner Chapatis is that the quantity of wheat would be greater in a Baati, in turn keeping soldiers full for much longer.

Churma was a later addition and another accidental invention. The story goes that a chef once mistakenly dropped a glass of sugarcane juice on the Baatis, which made them softer and sweeter. The end product was so delicious that cooks kept soaking the dough in sweetened water until they devised another way to add a hint of sweetness to the dish. So, a sweetened powder was made by crushing the dough balls and mixing them with sugar and ghee.