Plain Dosa/Sada Dosa
Dosa is the favorite of all of us. The young, the old, men and women all over the world seem to love this dish. I have already put up quite a few variety of dosas and today I would love to put up the simplest of the dosas and easy to prepare as well. In Karnataka, it is known by the Sada Dosa/Plain dosa as the name itself indicates. Here goes the recipe.
What you need to have:
1. Blackgram Dal – 1 cup
2. Sona masoori raw rice – 2 cups
3. Fenugreek seeds – 2 Teaspoons
Ingredients of Plain Dosa
What you do with what you have:
1. Wash and soak blackgram dal, fenugreek in one bowl and raw rice in water for about 2-3 hours in two seperate bowls.
2. Grind Blackgram Dal in the grinder to a fine consistency adding water in steps. Make sure the batter is thick and transfer the ground batter to a bowl.
3. Grind soaked rice as well in the grinder/mixer to a fine consistency and mix it with dal batter ground earlier from step 1. Keep it aside for fermentation over night adding required quantity of salt.
Ground Dosa Batter
Fermented Dosa batter is shown in the image below.
Fermented Dosa batter
5. Place dosa griddle on medium flame and when heated, sprinkle a few drops of cooking oil on it and also a few drops of water and rub it with either coconut coir or tissue paper. Pour a laddle of batter and spread it in a circular fashion and spread it to the required thickness.
Dosa batter being poured on the griddle
6. Sprinkle a few drops of oil when being cooked to turn it crispy
Dosa being cooked till crispy
Ready to serve plain dosa is as shown in the image below. Enjoy with your favorite potato bhaji or any of the wet chutneys.
Ready to serve crispy dosa with Bhaji & Amul butter
Good to know:
1. Always dosa batter should be ground to a thick consistency and on fermenting it will be just right. If it is ground to a thin consistency then it will be very difficult to spread the dosa batter and in turn dosas turn very thick and soggy.
How long it takes: 1 hour (other than soaking , fermenting and grinding)
Number of Dosas: 20
The Indian Food Court 
September 13, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Nice post for simple dosa. Met one of your relatives in SFO recently at a baby shower and we had a talk about your blog and recipes 🙂
September 14, 2009 at 2:00 am
Hi Supriya,
Kon mellele???????? Thanx a lot for ur comments.
October 27, 2009 at 12:44 am
Hi,
When do we add the fenugreek seeds to the grinding process?
Thanks,
Aruna.
October 27, 2009 at 7:44 am
Hi Aruna,
You must soak fenugreek seeds along with blackgram dal and grind it together. Later on grind soaked rice seperately.
January 2, 2012 at 10:25 pm
dosa kya dono side se fry hoga?
January 3, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Hi Sada,
Dosa cooks on both the sides once spread on the dosa griddle as described above.
February 15, 2012 at 5:43 pm
hii..Supriya,
Its very wonderful post well prepared all understandable
Regrads
LOvely
February 15, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Hi Lovely,
I am Prathiba and not Supriya. Thanx for your comments.
April 2, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Dear Mrs. Rao,
I admire your blog a lot. It is a good reference for amateur cooks like me. So far, I have tried your holige recipe and mushti polo recipe with great success ( the holiges were really soft and yummy).
I am still struggling to make decent dosas/ idlis and I wanted your advice. One big question is: how much water to add when grinding the batter? Yesterday I tried a simple dosa recipe with dosa rice, urad dal ( 4:1) and fenugreek seeds, grinded the dal+methi first, next the rice. The batter was pourable (as in it could slip in between the fingers if i took a big scoop of it in my palm). Kept the batter to ferment until doubled ( it took around 18 hours for me as the weather here is cool now). Before making the dosas, I scooped out a ladle of the batter and saw that it appeared spongy but thick. I mixed sugar and oil into it (as in your plain masala dosa recipe) and added some water to make the batter pourable. Alas! my dosas came out hard and not soft at all. What am I doing wrong? Is it that I added water before making dosas?
I have a similar problem with idlis ( I didnt add water to idlis before cooking, though, but they manage to come out bit hard. I have tried many recipes till now, changing the rice , proportions etc. Still no luck.
I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me.
April 3, 2012 at 9:26 pm
Hi,
You may please try Paper masala dosa from this blog for which i have given the exact measurement of water too. The condition being that one should use only Sona masoory raw rice to which this measure of water works well.The link being heep:// cuisineindia.wordpress.com/2008/10/16paper-masala-dosa