Saturday, July 26, 2014

Easy naan recipe

I have a wonderful Afghani bakery not too far (by car, that is) and I love their flat bread.  People line up for them and we get them still hot hot from the oven  But today my older son borrowd the car and I was "breadless",  So I looked around for a quick and easy solution.  I found the following video:


I saw other videos of this young man in the past, and I love the way he seems to salivate whenever he describes a particularly tasty aspect of the recipe he presents.  Fun!

Long story short, I made naan today!  But I was too lazy to even try his easy mode of preparation, instead I let my bread machine knead the dough.  These are the ingredients I used:

3 cups flour (regular all purpose)
1 cup warm water
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon instant, dry yeast
1 egg

I dumped everything in the machine and got it going.  I noticed that the dough was a bit on the dry side, so I added a bit of milk that I heated in the micro, just until the dough looked like in the video.  I closed the lid and went about my business until the end of the first cycle, meaning Knead and Rest.  When it started to knead again, I stopped the machine, turned out the dough on the slightly floured counter and stretched it out into a rectangle.  Then I took my largest baking sheet (big! - almost the size of the oven rack), sprayed it with a little PAM and stretched the dough all around on it. 

I put the tray aside while I set the oven.  I put the rack in its highest position and set the grill on high.  After a minute or so I sliced the dough into two triangles, gave them a bit of a better shape, and put the sheet in under the grill.  Well, within minutes it started to smell as if it was burning.  And actually in one small spot it was...! Apparently my HI setting is a bit too high? 

I removed the baking sheet, turned the naans over, and put it back, this time under the LO setting.  It took twice as long for the naan to start developing spots (I mean 4-5 minutes instead of 2...) but it turned out really nice.

In the meantime I melted a couple of tablespoons of salted butter in the micro and smeared the naan on both sides with a silicone brush right after I removed it from the oven.  It was sucked in instantly.


I do not need to reassure you that it turned out great, and tasted accordingly.  Although next time I may still try to use the HI setting but place the baking sheet one notch lower. I will also use double the amount of ingredients because this amount was a bit too small for the bread machine.  The dough flip-flopped from side to side, it needed my help to get all the flour incorporated properly.  Besides, it does not hurt to have more bread in the house!

No comments: