Chapaatee is an Indian version of bread which looks and tastes much different. The dough of wheat flour is given a circular flattened shape by rolling a cylindrical tool over it. It is then roasted on a frying pan.

There are different types of Chapaatees, usually made of wheat flour or Maida.

The one which is dry, without oil or ghee is called a Rotee. This the daily meal of the poor farmer in rural India. To add to the taste, he may eat it with an onion.

There's a very close relative of Rotee called as Foolkaa. This is the kind of Rotee that fills with steam while being roasted. Thus it has two layers, a thicker lower layer and a thinner upper layer that bulges out due to steam. I loved the Foolkaas that they cooked at the Punjabi Dhaabaa (Restaurant) at Vizag. It is at its best when served hot with Chicken Curry etc.

What we call Chapaatee has got many layers into it. There's a special procedure for cooking it. Let me explain:
-Knead some dough (say 1/4 kilo). It should be soft but dry.
-Make spherical pieces of it (say approx. 3 cm dia.).
-Then take one such sphere and keep it on a smooth flat surface. You may sprinkle some dry flour on the surface, as you put on a Carrom Board so that the dough doesn't stick to the surface.
-Take some cylindrical rod or pipe if you cannot find the proper Indian tool for that. Even a longish glass with a smooth external surface may work for you.
-Flatten the spherical dough piece into a circular shape with the help of the cylindrical rod (by rolling it to and fro over the dough).
-Apply a thin layer of oil/ghee over half of the flattened dough and fold the other half over it to form a semicircle.
-Apply yet another thin layer of oil over half of that semicircle and fold the other quarter over it to form a quarter.
-Flatten the quarter piece that you have into an almost circular shape. You can apply some dry flour while flattening so as to avoid the dough from sticking to the rod.
-Once it is almost circular and upto 4 mm thick, apply some oil on the frying pan and fry it on the frying pan.
-Apply a little oil on both the surfaces of the Chapaatee. As it heats up, steam will form inside it and it will bulge out forming some 4-5 layers inside it. While the outer surface is oily, the inner layers will be steamed. You may also use Ghee (Indian clarified butter) instead of oil.

I remember trying to make Chapaatees when I was a bit younger. I wanted to make it circular but ended up making a map of Japan. The next map was of Australia, another one of Sri Lanka and so on; but I could never make it circular.

Now I am staying as a bachelor at Mumbai. My friend suddenly thought of making chapaatees for dinner today. He said he would make them but also warned me that he ws doing it for the first time. I thought I should not take the risk of eating the chapaatees made by him. Somewhere there was a confidence that I would be able to cook them better than him so I told him that I have cooked chapaatees many times and I would cook them for him.
I told him to knead the flour. He did that and went out of the kitchen as his mobile was ringing. I took that opportunity for trying out whether I can really make it or not. I started flattenning it in a hurry. In the end it looked like an Amoeba. I got scared. I thought that it would be a shame, that it would be a faaloodaa of my reputation if I could not make it. So I tried again. This time with full concentration. I took some time and experimented on making it circular. In five minutes, I was able to make a good circular chapaatee.
When the friend returned to the kitchen he was really happy to see such nice chapaatees. I cooked atleast 12 and all were liked by them. The moral of the story is that if you put some effort in trying to learn something that you don't know, or understand something that you don't, or to do something that you think you can't; you will surely be able to overcome the hurdles with some patience, effort and perseverence. Will power and confidence is a must for success of every kind. They say it in a different sense, but 'practise makes man perfect'.