Baked Whole Wheat Namak Paare | Healthy Diwali Recipe

Name: Baked Whole Wheat Namak Paare | Healthy Diwali Recipe
Prep time: 7 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 22 min
Ingredients: 3/4 cup whole wheat flour; 1/4 cup all purpose flour; 2/3 teaspoon salt (or adjust to taste); 1/4 teaspoon carom seeds (also known as ajwain seeds); 2-3 teaspoon oil (use oil of choice); 1/4 cup cold water (to knead the dough)

By Manali Singh

4.72 from 7 votes

Oct 22, 2013, Updated Apr 13, 2019

Baked Namak Paare are the perfect healthy savory snack!

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Baked-Namak-Paare-cwm

Diwali is around the corner and we are all busy chalking out our Diwali menu, isn’t it? The festival of light is all about joy, happiness and a lot of sweets. I bet it is only time of the year when people in India eat so many sweets together at once. And India has such a huge variety of sweets, there’s gulab jamun, ladoos, kheer, halwa and the list goes on.

To balance this sweetness overload, one must also make some savory snack and the most popular one is namak paare which are traditionally made using all purpose flour (maida) and then deep frying them. During Holi and Diwali, I would munch on homemade namak paare so much that after a point my mom would ask me to stop!

As much as I love the traditionally made namak paare, this time I thought of giving them a healthy makeover and so I made 2 changes:

1. Replaced 75% of all purpose flour with whole wheat flour

2. Baked the namak paare instead of deep frying them

The result? A healthier version of namak paare which I wouldn’t mind snacking upon!

So, try this healthy savory snack this Diwali.

It’s crunchy, crispy and healthy!

Method

1. In a bowl, toss together the whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, salt and carom seeds. You can either use 100% whole wheat flour or 100% all purpose flour to make this. Carom seeds should be added according to one’s taste. You can add a pinch more of carom seeds if you like but they can give a slightly bitter taste if added in excess so be careful here.

2. Add the oil and mix it with the flour. You can use ghee instead of oil or use a combination of both. I only used olive oil here.

3. Start adding water slowly, the dough will start coming together. Knead till it forms a soft dough, let it rest for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

6. After 15 minutes, roll the dough to a thickness of your choice. I wanted to keep the namak paare really thin so I rolled the dough very fine.

7. Slice the dough into desired shapes now. I cut mine into diamond shapes using my pizza cutter. If you have a pizza cutter, please use it to cut these strips. Take a fork and prick the namak paare so that they don’t puff up while baking.

8. Arrange them on a baking sheet and put them into the oven.

9. Bake at 375 F for 12-15 minutes till the edges start to get brown. I flipped them once around 6-7 minutes.

10. Store in an airtight container.