South Indian Idli tops the list of healthy steam cooked foods. Precisely for this reason, hospitals serve idlies with sambar to in patients. Soft and spongy idlies simply melt into your mouth. Softness of idli depends upon how you make the batter. The proportion of ingredients is very important. Like most home cooks, I also used idli rice, urud and methi seeds. Methi seeds make the idlies soft and nutritious. In addition to Idli rice, I used long grain rice. I soaked urud (whole white) along with methi seeds, and rice separately. For convenience sake I left them soaking overnight. I used idli grinder for making the batter. First methi and urud were ground to make a smooth silky batter. I added enough water to make the right consistency. When you drop a ball of Urud batter in water, it should not dissolve immediately. I soaked steel cut oats in boiling water for 30 minutes. When grinding rice, I added the soaked oats. Rice batter does not have to be as soft as urud batter. I mixed both batters with a ladle, added active dry yeast, kept inside the oven at warm setting for ½ hour. I turned off the oven, let the batter be there for a few hours to ferment well. Yeast is a single cell protein, During the fermentation process it multiplies adding protein to otherwise carbohydrate batter. Since I do not have the idli cooker that whistles, I made idlies in the prestige pressure cooker, without the weight on. Cooked idlies were nice, soft and tasty#book