What care should be taken to prepare dough and Chapatis with Rice flour?

Question

Yesterday I prepared the Rice flour dough with water (room temperature 17 degree celsius) and salt.
I noticed:

• This dough did NOT stick to my hands at all.
• This dough did NOT stick to itself even. Its pieces kept on falling as I knuckled it over and over.
• The Chapatis made with this dough kept on breaking as I picked them. (I did NOT roll them too thin.)

What care should be taken to prepare dough and Chapatis with Rice flour so that the things don't break?

P.S. Never noticed any of these symptoms with Wheat flour.

UPDATE:

The hot water helped.

• Does knuckling the rice dough for somewhat long duration help someway in preventing the dough from breaking further?
• Does leaving the rice dough alone for an hour or so before preparing Chapattis help someway in preventing the dough from breaking further?

Answer 1

Your mistake here was using room temperature water. Unlike wheat flour, rice flour contains no gluten to give it structure.

Instead, rice contains a starch called amylopectin (and another called amylose, but that's irrelevant here). Boiling the rice breaks the amylopectin molecules, and makes the rice sticky.

So, in order to keep your chapatis in one piece, you need to use boiling water. Recipes I have looked at seem to suggest adding the rice flour to water boiling in a pan and stirring until it comes together.