I have only had what was described to me as an authentic dosa once at an indian restaurant in canada. It was very memorable. We have been trying for awhile now and keep failing as well I have been told the pan is very important as well, having a proper one. Although im still unclear what a proper one is.

Julie Sahni's name already gives me some hope for that recipe, her Indian cookbooks have always yielded me excellent results and praise from people who know what the real things taste like!

i was actually planning on making sambar tonight, dosa would be great with it but do not have 2 days to make them before tonight obviously.

I LOVE dosa, and had problems making them, as well. I picked up a mix lately that specified something that I hadn't seen before - spreading the batter in a *cool* pan. Which made all the difference.

I have a friend from the south of India whose husband cooked us the most amazing dosas. They supplied me with batter and I tried to reproduce just the cooking of the dosas at home. All I can say is that it must take much practice to make them beautiful!

A lot of Indian grocery stores carry pre-made batter, or other mixes. Dosas are also served at most South Indian restaurants---a little more hole-in-the-wall, but you can find them!

Also, eat them with chili powder sesame oil. Dee-licious!

I make dosas all the time.
Two good tips are,
1. let the batter ferment overnight in a barely-heated-and-turned-off oven
2. slide a cut onion over the griddle after every dosa

Oh, and the griddle makes a lot of difference. Non-stick teflon pans require less oil, but a seasoned cast iron pan works wonders.

Nupur, of One Hot Stove, has the best dosa recipe.
http://onehotstove.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-dosa-love.html

This one works well too.
http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/archives/2006/03/21/masala-dosa/

"...from a batter of ground rice and water". You forgot to mention Urad Dal. If you've been trying with only rice and water, i'm not surprised the batter didn't work. It's no dosa without Urad Dal!

Has anyone run into any issues with fermentation not naturally occurring? Or being less than effective? Could you seed the batter with yeast?

urad dal would ferment the batter. one can use a little yogurt or even fresh coconut water(not coconut milk) to ferment the batter.
the barely-heated-and-turned-off oven technique works well in NE winters.

Oh yes, I didn't mention the dal, but I have included that in batters. I think the other problem I had was not being able to get the batter smooth enough. Is a blender adequate, or is that not strong enough?

1. A cast iron griddle works best. If u can keep one aside for dosas, that would be perfect cos the oil that ensures absolutely NO sticking and tearing is sesame seed oil, which isnt necessarily a great flavour to have if you are cooking anything else.

2. Make sure the heat is on medium when u start. Oil the griddle well, you can use either a cut onion or potato to grease the griddle.

3. Dont mix the batter around too much if you have ground and fermented it yourself. This ensures that the bubbles from the fermentation are mostly intact, which will give you a thinner dosa.

4. Use a ladle or bullion soup spoon to scoop up the batter. You need a spoon that has a relatively rounded bottom to get the beautiful circular effect without too much effort.

5. Take 3/4 ladle to one ladle full of batter if you have a larger griddle and pour the batter at the centre, stop for a beat and then slowly start making concentric circles moving outward. Do this slowly or there will be breaks in the dosa. Once you finish raise the heat to maximum and watch for brown spots showing through from the underside. if you are using a cast iron griddle you can at this point drizzle a bare dessert spoon of sesame seed oil over the dosa. Dont worry about overdoing the oil, most of it stays on the griddle.

6. One the underside starts browning reduce heat to minimum, flip the dosa over and press it down to the griddle all around. This again will ensure a thin and fine dosa. Keep the dosa on the griddle till the sizzling reduces in intensity and the flip over again, fold in half and serve. If stuffing the dosa, you could flip it over, place stuffing in a line - off centre and roll using the spatula. This takes a bit of practice, so you might be better off manually rolling it initially.

7. DO make sure that the griddle isnt over hot as this will also lead to breaks in the dosa. One foolproof way is to sprinkle a little bit of water over the griddle after removing each dosa. You must then grease the griddle again using the potato/onion and sesame seed oil to make sure it remains non-stick

A few questions:

-What do you use to grind the batter ingredients? Would a food processor work?
-Most recipes call for soaking rice lentils...meaning uncooked rice and lentils?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

@sygyzy we do add any where between 1 to 3 tsp of fenugreek seeds (depending on how much batter we are making) to the urad while soaking and grind it with the urad. Leaving the batter in a pre-heated and turned off oven works for us during our winters here in bangalore, so maybe that should work for you too.

both the rice and urad are uncooked and have to be well soaked till swollen. i make mine in my blender and have on occassion used the juice jar when my steel jar gave out so it is definitely not an issue. First i start off with the urad and fenugreek and slowly grind. It takes a bit of time so keep switching it off and dip you finger in for a feel. The batter should be grainy but mostly fine. After you finish grinding the urad, remove the batter to the vessel you will ferment it in. You can add in the uncooked rice and grind. Another tip here would be to take 2/12 cups of uncooked rice to the 1 cup of urad. The balance can be made up with 1/2 c of cooked rice. In case you are using the cooked rice the start with the uncooked, pre-soaked rice and start grinding. One the rice is mostly broken up and relatively batter like in appearance, add in the cooked rice and grind again. Pour water in by the tablespoonfuls so that it has enough time to grind. Listen to the sound of the blender and pour water only when it sounds strained. Once the batter is ready, pour in with the urad batter and mix well. At this point I also do add in my salt into the batter and mix by hand as I like thin and crisp dosas' This takes care of the fact that the batter can be ladled directly onto the griddle the next day. The bubbles stay intact and you get a nice thin crisp dosa

For good dosa, I would say you need:

1. A good recipe, with a balance of rice, urad dal (get the whole skinned "gota" urad dal if you can). Some recipes will call for other additions, like flattened rice (poha) or rice flour etc.

2. You need a heavy duty grinder. A food processor just won't do- you need a wet grinder. This was my biggest reason for not being able to make good dosas before.

3. You need the batter to ferment well- which may require a bit of pampering in winter.

4. You need a well-seasoned cast iron griddle to make the dosas.

My current favorite recipe is this one: http://www.aayisrecipes.com/2007/09/29/butter-dosas-benne-dose/

I swear dosas made with this recipe are exactly like what you get in the best dosa restaurants in India.

Thanks, Sandhya, for the link love!

Makes me think fondly about the dosa cart alongside Washington Square Park in NYC! Oh how I miss that place.

I have never had dosa, but thanks to Anthony Bourdain, I know what they are and how they are made. The griddle reminds me of both a French crepe griddle, and a Scandinavian lefse griddle! Being that you are from the midwest, maybe you should try buying a lefse griddle (sometimes you can find them in thrift stores for cheap)? They are very large, very round, and electric (and probably nonstick, but still).

Just a thought.

I've found that recipes for dosa make for a lot of batter, but the good news is that you can let the batter ferment further and then make uttapam, which I like just as much, if not more, than dosa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttapam

A food processor works ok in my experience, but grinding rice and lentils can be hard on the motor. My blender handles dosa batter much better, but the motor still tends to overheat. If anybody has suggestions about which tool does the best job I'd greatly appreciate it.

The recipes I use come from Dakshin: Vegetarian Cooking From South India. The book also has a recipe for semolina dosa that takes less time to make because there is yogurt in the batter, which speeds up fermentation time. But then we're talking a different kind of dosa, because this one calls for semolina instead of urad dal. Still delicious, though.

Has anyone tried freezing and reheating these?

You can use a regular blender, food processor, indian-style food processor, or a special wet-grinder (that uses a stone to grind). These will all give you dosa batter in acending order of goodness. They key is to add as little extra water as possible, which is almost impossible in a blender. A food processor actually works OK, espsecially if you're not looking to buy a special appliance for this purpose.

Every south indian kitchen has one of the last two... grinding batter for idlis, dosas, vadas, as well as the accompanying chutney (coconut, anyone?) is almost a daily ritual.

I've broken a blender trying to grind batter with no added water :-(

Is grinding it too fine or well a CON? It seems like the more manual/ghetto grinding you do the better. That seems strange but I am willing to bust out the mortar and pestle over the Vitamix if that's what you guys are saying.

well traditionally a stone mortar and pestle was used- a large one. Nowadays its all electric. I like my dosa batter fine, and i think it works well if the batter is ground fine.

News flash - split mung bean is not the same as urad dal. Oops. I am going to try it anyway.

Just had my very first dosa on Monday. A new restaurant at the end of our takeaway-noodle-curry-indian-chinese-japanese road in the middle of the city. I didn't quite know what to expect and was surprised when it came to the table - a good 2 foot long! Only the middle section had filling in it - much like a cornish pasty - meat and potatoes on a side each. The dosa itself was light and crispy, like a really thin crepe. The only problem I had was a slightly bitter taste - kind of like a mix between aniseed and petroleum - that was in the sambar. I love coriander so it can't have been that - anybody have an idea of what it could have been? It kind of put me off the whole dish.