Mangalore Buns (Banana Puris)

Mangalore Buns (Sweet, soft, fluffy banana puris from Udupi-Mangalore)

Buns is a popular breakfast and tea time snack in Udupi-Mangalore region. Buns are sweet, soft fluffy puris made using banana. Usually, served with a spicy coconut chutney and sambar, but they also taste great without any accompaniment. They're amazingly flavourful & delicious.

They're super soft, super fluffy and is amazingly delicious with a hint of sweetness from bananas used. I obviously love them extra sweet. ☺ 

To make them we mix plain flour along with bananas, sour buttermilk, ghee, vanaspati and let them rest overnight to give us a super soft fermented dough. So that when deep fried, they give you an aerated, super soft, puffed doughnuts or what we in India call, puris. 

Recipe and all tips you need to make delicious, perfect 'buns' are below. 

Ingredients: 

To make 15-20 buns you'll need:

• 1/2 kg maida/all purpose flour/plain flour
• 2-3 ripe medium sized bananas 
• 10 tablespoons of sugar
• Salt to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
• 1 cup sour buttermilk/curds
• Oil for deep frying
• Extra flour for dusting
• 2 tablespoons of vanaspati ghee/dalda for soft, fluffier buns. (You can skip this if you can't find it.)
• Rolling pin :-)

Preparation Method:

Note: If your planning to have buns for breakfast then prepare the dough the previous night. If your planning to have buns for tea time then get the dough ready in the morning. The dough needs a resting time of 7-8 hours at room temperature.

Preparing the dough for buns:

1. To prepare the dough, peel and slice the bananas. Add them into a mixer/blender along with 1 teaspoon salt, 10 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 cup buttermilk/curds and blend them into a fine paste. 

You can even mash all these in a bowl using your hands.

2. Transfer the ground banana paste into a bowl, add in the remaining curds/buttermilk into it, add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and mix well.

3. Heat dalda/vanaspati ghee in a tempering pan, heat it just enough to melt the dalda, remove it off heat and keep it aside.

4. Add maida/plain flour to the mixture in the bowl little by little and knead it into a dough. When you have a sticky dough, add in the melted dalda and knead well.

5. Add in more flour if needed to make a nice dough that doesn't stick to your fingers completely. But we don't need a hard dough. We need a wet, soft, sticky, rubbery dough.

Do not add any water while kneading the dough. Sugar when mixed with banana and buttermilk/curds gives out enough water to knead a dough. 

6. Wet a thin cloth, squeeze out all the excess water, cover the dough completely with this damp cloth and allow it to rest at room temperature for 7-8 hours. The wet cloth helps retain moisture during fermentation of the dough.It also prevents drying of the outer layer of the dough.

Make sure the cloth isn't too wet and is just damp enough.

7. Once the dough has rested enough, it loosens up a little after fermentation and becomes elastic.

Once the dough has rested for a minimum of 5-6 hours it is ready to be made into buns. The more the dough ferments the better.

Making buns:

8. Lightly knead the dough before you make buns. Make tiny lemon sized balls of the dough, roll it out a little using flour to dust. Don't flatten the balls too much, keep them thick.

9. Heat up oil for deep frying, test if the oil is rolling hot by dropping a small piece of dough. If the dough emerges on top of the oil, that means the oil's hot enough. Lower the flame to medium heat. If the oil's not heated up yet, wait for another 3-4 minutes.

10. Dust excess flour off the rolled puris and fry them one by one on medium flame. As soon as you drop the pooris into the oil they puff up beautifully, flip them over, keep them pressed under the oil for few seconds, that helps the puri puff up more.

11. Once they are cooked on both the sides and are golden brown, remove the poori from the hot oil and place it in a bowl lined with paper towel.

Serving suggestions:

Serve these yummy, soft, fluffy buns on their own or with a coconut chutney, sambar. They also taste great with potato bhaji or kurma.

Buns taste great while they are both hot or cold and can be stored for a day. 

Additional tips and info:

• Ripened Mysore banana and Pachbale - 2 varieties of banana that are best suited for making buns, as they add sourness to the dough and in turn add to the softness, fluffiness of the buns. More ripe the bananas are, the better. 
• Pachbale picture - A variety of banana best suited for buns.
• Adjust the amount of sugar you add according to your palate. The more sugar you add, the darker your buns will turn out to be on deep frying. I love my buns sweet and I love to eat them plain without any accompaniment. Hence, I add in a lot of sugar.
• You can add 1 tablespoon of cumin to the dough along with the second half of buttermilk/curds you use, to enhance the taste of buns. Cumin gives a nice taste and flavour to buns.
• Make buns healthy by using wheat flour instead of the usual plain flour.  
• The more you knead the dough the more fluffier the buns become on deep frying.
• The longer the dough rests, the fluffier and softer the buns become on deep frying. 
• Do not keep the dough out at room temperature for more than 8-10 hours, store any leftover dough in the fridge. 
• Number of buns you can make out of the dough prepared, depends on size of balls of dough.
• For soft, fluffier buns fry them in dalda/vanaspati, refined oil. I use coconut oil for deep frying as it's more healthy.

Find more Konkani cuisine, Udupi, Mangalorean breakfast, tea time snacks recipes here.

Do try out the recipe and let me know how delicious it turned out. You could even connect with me on Twitter, by doing so you could tweet any queries, suggestions you have about any of the recipes and I would be glad to help you sort things out!

Tags: Mangalore food, Udupi cuisine, tiffin, tea time snacks, deep fried, breakfast, wheat flour, maida, banana puris, Mangalore buns, buns recipe