Mangalore Buns - Step by Step

Mangalore buns is one of my favorite snack or breakfast dish. It is a specialty of the Mangalore region in Karnataka. I usually make it on weekends and we have it for brunch. This dish is quite heavy and filling. Whenever I see over ripe bananas in the house I usually make these buns. My mom serves this with chutney pitti. It is a great snack to take on travels and hikes. Recently, I visited one of our relatives and came to know that they serve it with a special potato bhaji. I made buns with potato bhaji when some of our friends visited us for dinner and this dish was a great hit. Here is the recipe to make buns.

Ingredients
2 medium sized over ripe bananas
2 1/2 cups maida
6 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup yogurt or home made curd
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (not baking powder--see differences here. )
1/8 teaspoon salt
milk for kneading
oil for deep frying

Method
Blend the over ripe bananas. Add yogurt, salt, sugar and baking powder to the banana paste. Mix 2 cups of flour, and add milk ( if needed )to make the dough. The dough should not be like chapatti or roti dough. It will be a little sticky.
Cover the dough with oil on top to prevent it from drying . Cover it with a cloth keep it in a warm place overnight or for around 8-10 hours. In winters, I heat the oven to 100 degrees and turn the heat off once it is heated. Then I leave the dough overnight in the oven. You can leave the dough outside in the summers. The dough should rise to almost double its previous quantity.
Cover your fingers with flour and pick out small balls of the dough. The balls should be the size of a small lemon.

Press the balls of dough well in the flour and stretch them to make small puris.

Fry these puris in hot oil till they are golden brown. Put them on a kitchen paper to drain the oil.

Mangalore buns are ready to eat. Serve them hot with potato bhaji.


Preparation time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Serves: makes around 30 buns