Naan Bread

paqman

@mrs_story thread on Pita bread and @caliking 's comments inspired me to bake some homemade naan bread.  I used @Little Steven 's recipe (with two modifications) that he posted here:  http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1151296/naan-and-pide-experiments-on-steel

I did not have ghee so I used clarified butter and I added yeast.  I used the kitchen aid to kneed the dough.

4 cups White Flour
1/2 tsp Baking powder  
1/2 tsp rapid rise yeast
1 tsp Salt  
1/4 cup Milk  
1/4 cup plain youghurt 
1 tbsp Sugar  
1 Egg  
4 tbsp Clarified Butter (softened)
Water (enough to let the dough form a soft ball)

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl and make a well in the middle.  
Mix the sugar, milk, youghurt, eggs, 2tbsp of clarified butter and yeast in a bowl.  
Pour this into the center of the flour and knead adding water if necessary to form soft dough.  
Add the remaining clarified butter , knead again, then cover with damp cloth and allow the dough to stand for 15 minutes. Knead the dough again and cover and leave for 2-3 hours.  
Get the egg to nuke temps half an hour before 
Divide the dough into 8 balls and allow rest for 3-4 minutes.  
Shape each ball of dough with the palms to make an oval shape.  
Toss on the hot platesetter until browning on the bottom, brush with ghee and flip  
Cook til bottom is brown/black brush with clarified butter and pull. 
Wrap in foil til all breads are done.

I tested two methods: Directly on the grill and on the platesetter.  Both methods worked great but the ones made directly on the grill looked better.  Both tasted roughly the same.  I had to flip the naans for both methods.




Directly on the grill:






On the platesetter:

bgebrent

Good looking naan!  Looks light and crispy/chewy.

Killit_and_Grillit

Looks good. I'm gonna give this a try. This guy used to make it like on the side of a mud oven when we were in Afghanistan. The guy would put raw sugar and cinnamon on it and slap it on and when it scraped off it was done. He would just toss them in to the gunners hatches as we rolled out on mission. It was amazing. I guess that will be next weeks project. 

paqman

bgebrent said:

Good looking naan!  Looks light and crispy/chewy.

@bgebrent They were good, I highly recommend this recipe.

paqman

Killit_and_Grillit said:

Looks good. I'm gonna give this a try. This guy used to make it like on the side of a mud oven when we were in Afghanistan. The guy would put raw sugar and cinnamon on it and slap it on and when it scraped off it was done. He would just toss them in to the gunners hatches as we rolled out on mission. It was amazing. I guess that will be next weeks project. 

@Killit_and_Grillit I lived in India for 4 months about 10 years ago and it is the 2nd best thing that I have tasted there.  I was staying in a 5+ star hotel and they had a tandoor (clay oven) running 24/7.  The naan bread was one of the items they had on their snack menu.  I never tasted naan as good as I had there but this batch was close enough.  I like the cinnamon and sugar idea; I would add lemon just as well.  We have a pastry here in Canada called beaver tails.  It is an oval shaped multigrain bread dough deep fried and then sprinkled with lemon juice, brown sugar and cinnamon.  They have other variations but this is the most common one.  It sounds like this would be good on fresh naan bread as well.

paqman

@Killit_and_Grillit I had to try it... Butter, maple sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice.  Wow...

CPARKTX

Wow very nice. Love naan and that looks great. 

caliking

Most excellent! The cross-section of your naan looks really good.

And sometimes I forget that @Little Steven or @Little Steven actually knows how to cook Indian grub. 

BYS1981

I love naan.

Killit_and_Grillit

paqman said:

@Killit_and_Grillit I had to try it... Butter, maple sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice.  Wow...

So jealous...heading to Krogers to get the stuff now.  Guess working on the boat this afternoon will have to wait. 

EggNorth

Very nice, I will being trying this.  Thanks!