As I know it, roti is good for everyday eating, good for special occasions, and good for times in between. Now, if you don't know how to make roti, I probably can't help you here; because the short list of what can pass for ingredients depending on who you talk to will certainly deceive you into believing that you can actually make it; and you might even say to yourself that it couldn't really be that hard. Well, it might not be as hard as all that, depending on who you are, but it's fair to say that making roti is certainly more technique than certainty of portions and ingredients.
And, by the way, you probably don't have a tawa, which by the way I do, and it would be foolish to think that a frying pan will work just as well. But even if you don't need a tawa, because you're the type like me to just have a tawa, then you probably know how to make roti well enough to suit your taste; and then why should I just give you my recipe in any case. And for those without a tawa, and now that you know that a frying pan just won't work: You should just forget it at least for now and go to a restaurant.
But if you go to the average restaurant in North America, maybe a Jamaican restaurant, remember this, and if you care about the difference: Don't order roti if you want roti and not dhal puri. Well, I'm not a purist, nor certainly provential, I'm just being practical. As I've expressed elsewhere in That Old Time Feel, my own view is that culture is living and breathing; but if roti is puri, then how can we distinguish the one with the peas from the other one? And guess what: Roti doesn't come automatically with curry, even if it's that way on a restaurant menu; and it just might not do to distinguish roti without curry as the roti skin, because it just can cause confusion when you consider that roti-skin or roti-shell is already sometimes used in some places to distinguish a single roti from several maybe used (with curry) as part of a meal.
But, then, again, it's all just fine.
As I know it, Jamaican restaurants in North America don't even bother to carry roti, as roti, but instead carry puri, and call it roti; and some Guyanese restaurants seem to have gotten into that way as well, which is interesting. Unless I feel like a substitution from an Indian restaurant and want to get naan, which generally from the perspective of an Indian from India might be the closest of the rotis to the now distinctly Caribbean-influenced roti, my best bet for roti would seem to be a Trinidadian restaurant, because the difference between puri and roti seems fairly well-resolved. But make sure that you ask for buss-up-shot, unless you want to get into a clarifying discussion, and understand beforehand that this roti is definitely (the thicker) paratha roti, at least as we would call it when I was growing up, and if this sort of thing is important to you.
Of course, the roti story is in truth a complicated story in the Caribbean, and so even the World. Look at the link from Wikipedia at the end of this paragraph for a view as to the complications. And I should add here, in addition to not having grown up with puri as roti, I've never thought of bake or fry bake as roti, or maybe, better said, I never knew that bake or fry bake was a roti. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roti
"I see you talkin' to tha' girl practically every day. An' going out. Is when we goin' eat curry and roti? We in see a good wedding in a while, you know . . . . "
As I know it, roti is good for everyday eating, good for special occasions, and good for times in between; and roti isn't the same as daal puri, and I'm not even going to mention again that roti isn't bake, or fry bake; but if you like roti, at least my style roti, you might like Indian naan, and you'll sure like Trinidadian buss-up-shot, which is in truth paratha roti.
How do you know it?
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