Sweet Roti

Crisp, flaky, slightly chewy, sweet, gooey, sandy—you get all of these sensations at once when you bite into freshly made roti prepared the classic way: drizzled with sweetened condensed milk, sprinkled with sugar, and rolled up into a loose scroll. 

To create the desired texture and to make stretching possible, you need to age the dough for 48 hours. This allows it to develop both flavor and gluten. I find this aspect of roti-making more important than the theatrical swinging, stretching, and slapping of the dough that professional roti makers do. That’s fun to watch, of course, and it serves a purpose, but an average person would need months of doing nothing but swinging and stretching dough to master the technique. 

You can achieve the same result by stretching roti dough the way the Austrians stretch their strudel dough: on the table. It makes for a painfully boring party trick, but it gets delicious roti into your mouth in minutes instead of months. Different roti vendors in Bangkok have different ways of shaping their roti. The one I’ve recommended here is the easiest of all.