Puran Poli
A sweet stuffed flatbread with a genuinely pan-Indian identity rather than a single-state one: it appears as Marathi puran poli, Gujarati puran puri or vedmi, Telugu bobbatlu, North Karnataka holige, South Karnataka obbattu, Tamil boli, and Konkani ubbatti, each a real regional name for close variants of the same dish, so it's honestly credited to all of them rather than flattened to just Maharashtra. Its documented history runs back about 900 years to the 12th-century Sanskrit text Manasollasa; stronger claims of a 2,000-year Vedic-era origin are less verifiable and worth treating as folklore. Maharashtra carries the clearest festival association, served for Holi, Gudi Padwa, and Ganesh Chaturthi. Real puran poli rolls a thin outer wheat dough around a filling of cooked chana dal mashed with jaggery and cardamom, cooked on a griddle with ghee, a skill-dependent technique since the thin dough can easily tear and leak filling.
⚠ Contains: Gluten, Dairy. Always check your own ingredients — this isn't a guarantee for severe allergies.
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole wheat flour, plus more for the outer dough
- 1 cup chana dal, cooked until soft
- 1 cup jaggery, grated
- 1/2 tsp cardamom powder
- Pinch of nutmeg
- Ghee, for cooking
Steps
- Make a soft, pliable dough from the wheat flour and water. Rest 30 minutes.
- Cook the chana dal with jaggery over low heat, mashing, until it forms a thick, dry paste. Stir in cardamom and nutmeg.
- Roll a ball of dough into a small round, place a ball of the sweet filling in the center, and seal, pinching the dough closed.
- Roll out gently and carefully into a thin, even round without tearing.
- Cook on a hot griddle with ghee until golden-brown spots appear on both sides.