Soak raw rice in water overnight or you can also soak it in the morning and grind it in the evening.
Drain the water from rice. Take one portion of this rice and grind it to a fine paste and set aside.
Take one cup of this batter.
Take a pan and put this batter into it.
Add water and mix well.
Keep the pan on the stove and stir the batter continuously in a low flame.
Keep stirring until it thickens and the mixture looks like a gel.(This is a traditional process that is followed to get soft appam)
Once done let it cool and set aside.
Add this mixture to the rest of the batter and mix well until it dissolves completely in the batter.
Now grind the rest of the rice along with grated coconut and make a fine paste.
Add this to the earlier batter and mix well.
Add salt and baking soda. Mix again.
Add some water so that the mixture loosens a little and takes uniform consistency.
Allow it to ferment for 8 hours by keeping it covered.
Once the batter is fermented add water to make the consistency of batter loose and easily pourable.
Heat appam kadai or appachatti.
Pour 1 big laddle of batter to the centre of kadai and immediately turn and tilt the pan in circular motion so that the batter spreads in circle.
Cover and let it cook for 2 min. Covering with a lid is important as the steam from it will help the center part to get cooked.
Open the lid, and once the sides are crisp, remove and serve.(Don't flip it)
Make the rest of the batter the same way.
Serve hot along with potato stew, chicken curry, egg curry, kadala curry or dry coconut chutney.
Notes
Grease the kadai slightly with oil, if you are using an iron appam kadai.
You can also make appam in dosa tawa, if you don't have an appam kadai or appachatti.Spread batter like dosa and close tawa with a lid to cook.(You will get a tasty appam except the proper shape.The process of heating batter also called as KAPPIKACHAL in Kerala is must in order to get a soft appam.