Degchi
Atta
Also written: whole wheat flour, chapati flour
- Urduآٹا
- Hindiआटा
- Banglaআটা
- Arabicدقيق القمح
Atta is whole wheat flour, milled finely enough to make soft flatbreads. It is the everyday flour for roti, chapati, paratha and puri, and the bran is still in it, which is why it behaves differently from white flour.
Maida is the refined white flour, used for naan, samosa pastry and some sweets. Atta takes up more water than maida, so the dough feels firmer at first and then softens as it rests. Knead it a little softer than feels natural, then cover it and leave it for 20 to 30 minutes. The rest lets the flour hydrate fully, and the roti will roll thinner without springing back.
If you are cooking outside South Asia, whole wheat flour from an ordinary supermarket is usually coarser than atta, and it makes a firmer, drier roti. Look for a bag labelled atta or chapati flour in South Asian or Middle Eastern shops; it is often sold in large sacks and keeps well in a sealed container. Do not swap in all-purpose flour unless a recipe says so, because the dough, the colour and the way it puffs on the tawa will all change.
To get a roti to puff, roll it evenly, cook it on a hot tawa until small bubbles appear, flip it, and let the second side finish until it balloons. Uneven rolling is the usual reason one side stays flat.
Recipes that use it
17 of our 247 recipes call for atta. Here are a few to start with.
- Potato-Stuffed Flatbread
- Tandoori Roti
- Nihari
- Egg-Stuffed Flatbread
- Chapati / Phulka (Plain Roti)
- Dhakaiya Haleem
Read next
South Asian Recipes in US Cups and Ounces: A Practical Conversion Guide