Cooking recipes

While calorific values of general food stuffs is readily found on the internet, roti or Indian bread is a tough one to estimate, because no two people make rotis of the same size or thickness. Some may add oil to bind the dough, some like to coat fresh rotis with a layer of melted ghee to keep them soft and fragrant.

Since a lot of friends ask me about how many calories does a roti add to your diet, I decided to do some basic calculations and came up with this method, where each one of you can calculate the calories in your roti.

This is how I make rotis in everyday cooking -

1 cup whole wheat flour (atta)
water to make dough
1 tsp oil in the end to knead dough till smooth and non-sticky

I make 8 rotis from 1 cup flour.

1 cup whole wheat flour is roughly 400 calories
1 tsp oil is 40 calories

440/8 gives 55 calories per each roti that I make at home.


How can you calculate for your roti?

1. If you are not sure if yours is whole wheat flour - check for the calories provided by 100 g of your wheat flour brand (will be given on the packing in Nutriton information)

100 g of whole wheat flour is roughly 3/4 cup

To get the calories per one cup of your brand of whole wheat flour : Multiply the calories in 100 gram by 4/3.

This gives you the calories per cup of flour (a)
If the pack does not mention nutritional info (as would be the case where the atta is ground in the mills in many homes in India) - you can take a rough figure of 400 calories per cup of whole wheat flour.

For eg: If your package says that 100 grams provides 330 calories, then 1 cup will give 330 X 4/3 which is 440 calories.

While making rotis, measure out exactly one cup of flour and use water as necessary to make dough.

2. Note the number of teaspoons of oil you use while making dough.
Add 40 calories per teaspoon of oil. (b)

3. If you use ghee in the end, add 120 calories per tablespoon of ghee. (c)

4. Count the number of rotis that you made from 1 cup of flour (d)

5. Calories per roti will be (a+b+c) divided by d

Eg: If I made 8 rotis from 1 cup flour using 1 tsp of oil and 1 tbsp of ghee, it will be

(440 + 40 + 120) / 8 = 75 calories per roti

The same calculation applies to parathas or naan, where the number obtained from one cup of flour will be much less, also more fat used in their preparation making them high calorie.

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