Homemade Laadi Pav and Pav Bhaji: Mumbai Special

Published: Oct 16, 2010 · Modified: May 31, 2024 ·by Swathi.This post may contain affiliate links ·

Delicious and homemade Laadi pav and Pav Bhaji with lots of veggies and tomtao and touch of butter.

What is Pav Bhaji

Pav Bhaji is a popular street food dish from India, especially in the state of Maharashtra. It consists of a spicy vegetable curry (bhaji) served with soft buttered bread rolls (pav).

The bhaji is made by mashing a variety of vegetables such as potatoes, peas, tomatoes, and onions, and cooking them with spices like cumin, coriander, turmeric, and red chili powder. It is typically cooked with a generous amount of butter, which gives it a rich and flavorful taste.

The pav (bread rolls) are usually toasted with butter on a griddle, adding to the dish's indulgence.

Pav Bhaji is often garnished with chopped onions, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime juice. It is a flavorful and filling dish, enjoyed by people of all ages, and is a popular fast food item in India.

Little bit history of Pav and Pav bhaji

Pav in Marathi means bread, and it is borrowed from Portuguese pão meaning Bread. Laadi pav means it looks like slabs of buns resembling the slabs of the floor after it gets baked. This dish has a history that it was created by a vendor for textile mill workers.

As their lunch break time is limited, they need something to eat within a few minutes and it should be filling also. So he created pav in the place of rice and curry is substituted with pav bhaji. Read more about from here.

Anyway they are most delicious fast food I can think about and it requires no fries on the side as burgers do.

How to make homemade soft Ladi pav?

You need following ingredients

All purpose flour

Milk

Butter

sugar

salt

I don’t know how authentic pav is made so decided to use white bread dinner roll from my favorite bread baking book. The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. I made a few changes in the recipe by not adding egg and reduced the amount of sugar and butter and slightly increasing the amount of yeast. Other than that I followed the recipe.

Finally I was able to make pillowy white soft pav from my own kitchen. Even after 4 days at room temperature pav was able to retain its softness and taste.

For pav bhaji, we used cauliflower, capsicum, onion, potato, peas, tomato paste , chili powder, kasturi methi( dried fenugreek leaves) and pav bhaji masala.

Usually pav bhaji is made in flat big skillet/tawa. We used our non-stick skillet to make Bhaji.

Everything was done by my hubby expect cutting, making ginger garlic paste and finally cleaning the vessels and kitchen.

Pav bhaji is slightly runny curry of mushy vegetables with loads of butter in it. We reduced the amount of butter as much as possible. Still some butter is there without butter how can you say it is pav bhaji.

How to serve Pav Bhaji

Buttered pav is served with raw onions and lemon wedges along with bowl of pav bhaji. Try this delicious combo, if we can’t be in Mumbai at least pav bhaji can be in our kitchen and we can taste this fast food in our dining table watching movies, serials or sports.

Instructions to make Pav

In a small bowl stir in butter, sugar and warm milk so that everything gets dissolved and combined well. Set aside for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl or bowl of electric mixer add flour, yeast, salt and butter-sugar-milk mixture and mix with a large metal spoon or (on low speed of electric mixer with the paddle attachment) until all the flour is absorbed and forms a ball.

Transfer the dough to well oiled bowl let it ferment in room temperature until it doubles in size. It took about 2 hours and 5 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Mist the pav/buns with water and bake them for about 16 minutes or until the top becomes golden brown.

After baking

How to make Pav bhaji

You need following ingredient to make the Pav Bhaji

Vegetables like cauliflower, green bell pepper, potato, onion, tomato, peas.

Spices like ginger garlic paste, Kasturi methi, pav bhaji masala, salt, tomato paste, turmeric, paprika, chili power, salt.
and finally butter and cilantro.

Pressure cook cleaned cauliflower florets, chopped potato, peas with 1 cup of water for 3 whistles. It takes about 25 minutes. Set aside cooked vegetables.

Heat medium skillet with oil and when it heated add chopped onion and fry until it becomes translucent or changes to light brown color it takes about 6 minutes.

To this add chopped capsicum and fry for 2 minutes and add ginger-garlic paste. Fry for 2 minutes then add tomatoes along water and cook until they become soft.

To the above mixture add turmeric powder, paprika, red chili powder, salt , tomato paste and pav-bhaji masala and fry until the spices get infused and roasted incorporated well. It takes about 3 minutes.

To the above mixture add spices and fry until the spices get infused and roasted incorporated well.

To onion- capsicum-tomato spice mixture add cooked vegetables and water mash them with potato masher also stir in between to prevent them from sticking the pan. Then add butter and mix everything.

Finally garnish with chopped coriander leaves and lemon juice cook until everything gets mushy and no ingredients are recognizable, to this add dried fenugreek leaves/kasturi methi and mix well

Serving Pav

Slit the pav/bun horizontally, spread with some butter on both side and toast in them in heated pan.

If you wish you can make pav more spicy by spreading the sides with this spice mixture(1 tablespoon butter+ 1 tablespoon chopped coriander leaves+ ⅛ teaspoon of chili powder+ 1 teaspoon of pav bhaji masala) and toast them. (I skipped this part too)

It also going to Susan's Yeastspotting

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5 from 9 votes