Davangere benne dosa recipe with step by step photos – crisp, soft and buttery dosas made with parboiled rice, lentils and puffed rice. Makes for a healthy and tasty breakfast when served with a side of dry potato curry and spicy coconut chutney.
About Davangere Benne Dosa
Davangere is a city in central Karnataka. Karnataka is one of the states in south India. There are some dishes unique to Davangere and benne dosa is one of them.
While living in bangalore, we did manage to have benne dosa from davangere. I still remember the taste of dosa, the potato palya and the coconut chutney.
I had been wanting to make as well as share this recipe from a long time. I did a lot research to get the recipe close to the benne dosa we had.
Sharing a fool proof recipe after a few attempts of making this dosa. Broadly I referred this post to get the recipe which came close to the authentic dosas we had.
‘Dosas’ are crepes made from fermented lentil-rice batter. ‘benne’ is butter in Kannada language. So basically these are butter dosas.
Here the butter used is fresh white butter and this gives a distinct taste, which is different when you use yellow butter. But you can still make these dosas with yellow butter. If you cannot have butter, then make with oil and still enjoy the deliciousness.
These davangere dosas are not like the regular Dosa. The taste as well as the texture is different. They are crisp and yet have a soft, light texture.
Davangere benne dosa is usually served with a potato filling (called as potato palya) and a spicy coconut chutney. The one we had were just mashed potatoes, but I did want to give some tempering. So sauteed some onions & green chili in oil for the potato stuffing.
The chutney that is served is very spicy and is made with minimal ingredients. The spicy coconut chutney balances the bland potato filling very well.
I have shared the detailed recipes for both the potato palya and coconut chutney in the recipe card below.
Ideally benne dosa is best had hot. however, since these dosas remain soft even after cooling, you can also pack them in tiffin box.
How to make Davangere Benne Dosa
1. Pick and then take 1 cup idli dosa rice or parboiled rice (200 grams), ¼ cup husked urad dal (whole or split, 50 grams) and ¼ teaspoon methi seeds in a bowl.
2. Rinse all of them together a couple of times.
3. Strain the water and keep it aside.
4. Take 1.5 cups of puffed rice (50 grams) in a bowl.
5. If you want you can rinse them too once. Or add them directly to soak. Do note that rinsing makes the puffed rice a bit sticky to handle.
6. Strain and add the rinsed puffed rice to the bowl containing the rinsed urad dal, rice and methi seeds.
7. Pour 3 to 3.5 cups water. Stir well, cover and allow all the ingredients to soak for 5 to 6 hours.
8. These are the soaked ingredients after almost 6 hours.
9. Strain very well and add the soaked ingredients in a grinder jar. Strain really well as the puffed rice holds quite some water. Also when adding water for grinding be careful.
10. Also add 1 tablespoon of all purpose flour (maida).
11. Add water in parts and grind to a smooth batter. A fine rava (sooji) like grainy consistency of the rice also works. I ground it in two parts.
In the first part I added ½ cup water and in the second part, I added ¼ cup water. So overall used ¾ cup water for grinding. If the grinder becomes hot, then wait for it to cool down and then continue with the grinding.
12. Here I am adding the first batch of the batter in a pan.
13. In this pic, I have added the second batch of the batter.
14. Add ¼ teaspoon sugar. Skip adding sugar if you live in a hot or warm climate. In this case, add salt before fermenting the batter and add sugar after fermentation of the batter, i.e just before you prepare the dosas.
15. Stir and mix very well.
16. Cover and keep the batter to ferment for 8 to 9 hours or more depending on the temperature conditions in your city. Here is the picture of the dosa batter after fermentation.
The day I made this batter, the temperature during night was 12 degrees celsius. I kept the batter to ferment for about 16 hours. Depending on the temperature in your city, you can keep the batter to ferment from 8 hours to 20 hours.
17. Before preparing the dosas, add ¼ teaspoon baking soda and salt as per taste.
18. Stir and mix very well.
Cooking benne dosa
19. In a cast iron tava or griddle, spread some oil with a spoon or with halve of an onion. For a non-stick pan, no need to grease with oil.
Make sure to use a well seasoned cast iron tawa or skillet. So that the dosa does not stick on to the skillet.
20. Take a ladle of the batter and pour on the tava. Heat the tava first very well. Before spreading the batter, reduce the heat and then spread the batter gently.
21. Gently spread to a slightly thick dosa. Once you spread the dosa, increase the heat to medium intensity. You can even spread the batter to a thin dosa.
22. When the dosa starts cooking, you will begin to see a lot of tiny holes or air pockets in the dosa.
23. Cook on medium heat till the top looks firm and cooked.
24. Here the top has cooked.
25. Once the top has cooked, add some softened butter on top. I used yellow butter as I had ran out of white butter.
26. Spread the butter gently all around with a spoon or spatula.
27. Flip the dosa with a spatula. For a more deep brown and crisp crust, cook for some more time before flipping.
28. Cook for some seconds or a minute and then fold the benne dosa.
29. Serve davangere benne dosa hot with potato palya and coconut chutney. If you are unable to serve them hot, stack them in a roti basket or casserole and serve warm.
You can also add some butter on top of the dosa while serving. You can serve the benne dosa separately or place the potato stuffing in the dosa and then serve.
If you are looking for more Dosa varieties then do check:
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davangere benne dosa
Ingredients
for benne dosa
- 1 cup idli dosa rice or parboiled rice or 200 grams
- ¼ cup urad dal, 50 grams
- ¼ teaspoon methi seeds
- 1.5 cups puffed rice (murmura or pori) or 50 grams
- 1 tablespoon maida (all purpose flour)
- ¼ teaspoon sugar
- 3 to 3.5 cups water for soaking
- ¾ cup water for grinding or add as required
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- salt as per taste
- oil and butter as required white or yellow
for making potato palya
- 300 grams potatoes or 3 to 4 medium potatoes
- 50 to 60 grams onion or 1 medium onion chopped or ⅓ cup chopped onion
- 1 small green chili, finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon oil
- salt as required
for making spicy coconut chutney
- ½ cup tightly packed grated coconut, fresh or frozen
- 5 to 6 green chilies. roughly chopped
- 1 to 2 seeds of a green cardamom
- 3 to 4 tablespoon water for grinding
- salt as required
Instructions
preparing dosa batter and fermenting
- Pick and then take idli dosa rice or parboiled rice, urad dal, methi seeds in a bowl.
- Rinse all of them together for a couple of times. Drain and keep aside.
- Take 1.5 cups puffed rice (50 grams) in a bowl. If you want you can rinse them too once. Or add them directly to soak. Do note that rinsing makes the puffed rice a bit sticky to handle.
- Strain and add the rinsed puffed rice to the bowl containing the rinsed urad dal, rice and methi seeds.
- Pour 3 to 3.5 cups water. Stir well, cover and allow all the ingredients to soak for 5 to 6 hours.
- Strain very well and add the soaked ingredients in a grinder jar. Strain really well as the puffed rice holds quite some water. Also when adding water for grinding be careful.
- Add 1 tbsp all purpose flour (maida).
- Add water in parts and grind to a smooth batter. A rava like grainy consistency of the rice is also fine. I ground in two parts. In the first part I added 1/2 cup water and in the second part, I added 1/4 cup water. So overall used 3/4 cup water for grinding.
- Take the ground batter in a bowl.
- Add 1/4 tsp sugar. mix very well.
- Cover and keep the batter to ferment for 8 to 9 hours or more depending on the temperature conditions in your city.
- Before making the dosas, add 1/4 tsp baking soda and salt as per taste. Mix very well.
preparing benne dosa
- In a cast iron tava or griddle, spread some oil with a spoon or with halve of a onion.
- Take a ladle of the batter and pour on the tava. Heat the tava first very well. Before spreading the batter, reduce the flame and then spread the batter.
- Gently spread to a slightly thick dosa. Once you spread the dosa, increase the flame to medium intensity.
- You will begin to see a lot of tiny holes in the dosa.
- Cook on medium flame till the top has cooked.
- Once the top has cooked, add some butter on top.
- Spread the butter gently all around with a spoon or spatula.
- Flip the dosa. Cook for some seconds or a minute and then fold.
- Serve davangere benne dosa hot with potato palya and coconut chutney. If you are unable to serve them hot, stack them in a roti basket or casserole and serve warm. You can also add some butter on top of the dosa while serving. You can serve the dosa separately or place the potato stuffing in the dosa and then serve.
preparing potato palya for benne dosa
- Take 300 grams or 3 medium sized potatoes. Rinse them well and then steam or boil them till they are completely cooked. If cooking in a pressure cooker, then cook the potatoes for 4 to 5 whistles.
- When they are still warm or slightly hot, peel and mash them roughly. Keep aside.
- In a pan, heat 1 tbsp oil. Add ⅓ cup chopped onions.
- Saute the onions till translucent.
- Add 1 small green chilies (finely chopped). If you want you can also add 2 to 3 green chilies. Stir well.
- Then add the roughly mashed potatoes.
- Season with salt.
- Mix very well and saute for a minute.
- Serve potato palya with davangere butter dosa or regular dosa.
preparing coconut chutney for benne dosa
- Take ½ cup freshly grated tightly packed coconut in a small grinder. Add 5 to 6 green chilies (roughly chopped) and 1 or 2 seeds from a green cardamom pod. For a pronounced cardamom flavor, you can add all the seeds from 1 small green cardamom.
- Season with salt as per taste.
- Add 3 to 4 tbsp water and grind to a smooth consistency.
- Remove coconut chutney in a serving bowl and serve the chutney with davangere benne dosa and potato palya.
This Benne Dosa Post from the blog archives, first published in Jan 2016 has been republished and updated on December 2022.
(I am unable to copy the link onto the comments for some odd reason, sorry)
Found your recipe copied almost word for word in this website …
Hopefully this gets dealt with…
#notoplagiarism
PS:you do some incredible work here !
thank you suba. i know of this website (i have removed the link as then the comment becomes spammy). earlier, i have even written to them and they did remove the recipes. it is painful and takes a lot of times dealing with such cases. most of the times the person copying just denies everything and makes lame excuses eg – i took from google. it is not yours etc. this happens also for pictures. so a waste of time and energy. i am ignoring these people for now as i really do not have time to follow with them. but i appreciate your concern. thanks again for letting me know.
I just found a very sinilar recipe that is copied off your blog of the same dish…i can only imagine the hardwork you must put in to bring out this kind of great work and to see it copied blatantly is painful. Hopefully something can be done about it .
Will post the link below
Hello madam
I tried this dosa recipe and also other recipes of yours was very nice. I hope children doesn’t need hotel food. Thankyou for your recipe.
Ok, we at home lovvvvve Davangere dosa and I cam by your page and followed you perfectly. Except my dosa did not get that porous and white on the upside. It was 95% there but that little thing was missing.
Can you troubleshoot and tell me where I could have gone wrong?
In that context pls tell me what proportion of soda to rice will you recommend. I have a tiny suspicion that my soda may have been less. So, for instance you have used 1/4 tsp soda for 200 gms rice. I used a healthy pinch of soda to 1 american cup of rice which may well be 180 gms. Do you think my soda was less?
Also I noticed you do not add oil after spreading the dosa batter. That’s correct?
I also may have not bothered to lower the flame of my gas and given that I use a heavy iron tava, I should have kept it medium to low I feel.
But now you tell me.
the soda was less, for about 180 grams you can add 3 to 4 pinches of soda. 4 pinches is 1/4 teaspoon. i have used butter as thus i have not used oil after spreading dosa batter. i also use heavy iron pans for making dosa. i usually keep the flame low to medium and regulate it as required. when the dosa batter is spread, the tawa has to be hot, although not very hot. the heat from the tawa helps in giving porousness to the dosa.
Hi Dassana,
Yesterday I made the batter ready but dint add maida while grinding..as I wanted to make idly as well… So after fermentation this morning..dosa batter required for one time I kept aside and kept the rest in fridge… With the dosa batter which I had kept aside I added one or two tbsp of maida and mixed and added pinch of baking soda and prepared dosa… It was delicious… Actually I wanted to make puttu and kadala curry. So prepared kadala curry last nite and tot dosa for note.. But then my husband saw the batter outside in kitchen for fermentation last nite and said he wants dosa… but I already made kadala curry… So mrg I made this davangere style benne dosa the color if dosa was nice and I was happy and served my hubby with kadala curry only… The combo was gUD. He enjoyed…thanks a lot for the recipe…
thanks vidya. maida can be added later too. dosa and chana is also our favorite combo. in fact with kadala curry i do make dosas occasionally. thanks for sharing in detail about the benne dosa recipe.
Hi dassana,
can we skip baking soda here? Like with your fermented poha idli, i’ve made them many times without adding b. soda and they still turned out fabulous. It’s just that i usually try to avoid b.soda (unless it’s a cake)
ruchi, of course you can skip baking soda in the recipe. baking soda does additionally help the dosas to have a softness, but you can easily skip it.
why maida and can I skip soda?
shilpa, because the original recipe demands maida. you can skip maida but don’t skip soda.
Mummm…tempting dosas 🙂
Thanks jayanthi
Hii,
One can easily make ur recipe with their eyes closed as ur recipes r just perfect.After referring to ur blog and making few recipes,I became an addict to ur blog.
Had always tried this DOSA at various DOSA outlets locally here and wondered ever if I could make it perfectly.
Thanxs to ur simply supppperb and perfect recipe.
I had tried BENNE DOSA yesterday and made the batter day b4 yesterday and it was perfect and simply delicious.My 5 year old son had it all day long and insisted for it today too, as it is one of his favourites.
Thanxs and keep the good work going.
Welcome Pretti. Glad to know this. Small children are best critics. If he liked it then you must have made it very well. Thanks for your positive feedback on benne dosa. Do try some more recipes.
Is it 1.5cups of puffed rice or 0.5cup? How can it be 50gms when 1 cup is 200gms?
it is 1.5 cups puffed rice. the cup is 250 ml. different ingredients have different measurements in the same cup. e.g. 1 cup of rice can weigh 200 to 215 grams. it depends on the density of the ingredient. puffed rice is very light. so when 1.5 cups of puffed rice is weighed on a weighing machine, it weighs 50 grams. here only the puffed rice is weighed and not the measuring cup. another way of saying is that 50 grams of puffed rice, occupies space in 1.5 cups or fills 1.5 cups. hope i am clear in explaining.
tried today. awesome receipe. exactly same taste as I had in davengere 10 yrs back
thankyou priyanka 🙂
hi.. I don’t hv pori. can I substitute it with poha? if yes, would the quantity remain the same?
with poha, the quantity will reduce. i would suggest to add 1/2 cup of poha.
I just downloaded your app on to my phone, sitting in Canada feel right at home each time I make your recipe’s . your’s is the only website I look into before I cook most dishes, next on list Benne do said Thanks for all your hard work and recipe testing for lesser mortals like us.
pleased to know this thankyou so much mala 🙂
It is mentioned in the ingredients murmura 1.5 cups as 50 grams whereas 1 cup parboiled rice as 200 gms, kindly clarify
hi bharthi, murmura is very light in weight as compared to rice, hence the difference. hope this helps.
nice and quick recipe…. but we need to cover dosa with lid while cooking?
thanks gauri. if you want you can cover. then just cook dosa on one side.
Hi amit
Dosa is yummy. Just want to ask few things .why do we add maida.also is the quantity of this batter is same as set dosa batter. Becoz the quantity of this batter was more.. Wanted to know if its becoz of fermentation.
maida is added to the traditional recipe. you can skip if you want to. its because of fermentation. the batter amount is same.
The dosa looks tempting I live in Tamil nadu actually what do u mean by dosa rice im a beginner in cooking would u please help ? by the way I tried some of your recipes like aloo kurma , hotel kurma which turned out great. Thanks in advance.
thanks archana. dosa rice is variety of parboiled rice which is used specifically for making idlis or dosa. parboiled rice is also called ukda or sela chawal. if you do not get dosa rice, you can use parboiled rice also.
nice recipe
thankyou aashi 🙂
Hai ,
I was busy for a while and after a week opened to check a recipe and I was so happy to see benne dosa recipe. My hometown is davangere I will try this at the earliest and will let you know the outcome. I know for sure it will turn good and delicious. All your recipes are always hit and delicious. None of your recipes has failed.
thats nice to know nanditha. do try the benne dosa. they are good.
Omg …. !!! Davangere Benne Dosa …
Am a follower of this website .. and it’s an awesome website I tried almost 30 + recipes..
Davangere is my home town .. I was happy n surprised to see the recipe ..
Thank u cho much ..
glad to know this shruthi 🙂 you are welcome and thankyou for your positive words.
Hi, Tried your set dosa. Was skeptical due to less urad dal ratio. But it came out soft and nice. Idly with same batter was nice, but it not puff, may be due to cold weather. Thanks for the batter proportion.
welcome always sreedevi glad you liked the dosa try fermenting for some more time during winter and thankyou.
Iam an admirer of yur cooking style.My culinary skills hv improved after following yur recipies…Thanks for this addition n waiting for many more….
thank you neetu for this positive comment. will be adding some more recipes.
Looking forward for sme easy pasta recipie
neetu you could check pasta recipe here.