Naan Bread

 I have been following Eitan Bernath (https://www.eitanbernath.com/about/) for a while now, a young, energetic and enterprising young chef from New York.  I started following his fun videos on tik tok and then got drawn into some of the more complex recipes that he executes with ease.  I have made naan at home once before and was not happy with the outcome and never bothered trying it again - until Eitan came along with his recipe and fun technique using an age old Indian fry pan or Tawa.

I got myself a tawa and decided to embark on the Naan journey.  Nobody needs an introduction to naan - most Australians I know love Naan and Butter Chicken. We already have a great recipe for butter chicken:

http://kitchenanugraha.blogspot.com/2017/07/butter-chicken.html

Today we will look at Eitan's recipe for the garlic naan.  My children and Sam worked together on recording this recipe - so we have photos from different cameras!  But this is definitely one recipe I am going to be making more of, for sure.  The naan itself is spongy, fragrant, looks fantastic and even has the tandoor burn marks.  Once you make this at home, there will be no more going to the restaurant for a naan.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups warm water in a bowl (slightly more than body temperature)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 sachets of Tandaco dry yeast  
• 4 cups plain flour  + More for dusting
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons oil
• ½ cup garlic, chopped
• ¼ cup butter, softened
• ½ cup coriander leaves, chopped
• 1 Indian Tawa (though this can be made in the oven under the grill or the open flame on top of a mesh grill)

Method:

To the bowl of warm water, add the sugar and dissolve. Now add the two sachets of yeast, cover the bowl and set it aside for 10 minutes.  In 10 minutes, the water should look frothy and smell delicious:

In a large bowl, add 4 cups of flour and 2 teaspoons of salt.  Mix well.  Next add the activated yeast water and start mixing in the flour.  Add yogurt bit by bit - you may not have to use all of it - until you get a soft, moist and springy dough.  The dough should not be dry. Knead the dough well, make it into a ball.  Add 1 tablespoon oil on the dough and smoothen it out. Grease a bowl with about a tablespoon of oil and place the oiled dough inside it.  Cover with a lid and keep in a warm place for the dough to double in size.

In about an hour or so, your dough should have doubled in size like this:

 

While you are waiting for the dough to rise, chop up the garlic and coriander leaves fine and keep it ready.  Keep a cup of water with a pastry brush ready too.

When the dough is ready, use your hands and make fist sized balls and keep them ready. I got 14 dough balls out of 4 cups of flour.

Use a wooden board, dust it with flour and roll out the dough ball gently into an oblong shape.  You can use your fingers to pull it into shape.  Add 1/2 a teaspoon of chopped garlic and 1/2 a teaspoon of chopped coriander and using the rolling pin, press it to the top of the naan.

Get the tawa out and heat it on the gas stove.

When the tawa is hot, gently get the naan bread off the wooden board and flip it so that you have the non decorated side on your palm.  Using the pastry brush, wet the back of the naan with water.

Place the wet naan, wet side on pan gently pulling it to shape as you do it.

When you see the naan bubbling up, you are ready to turn the tawa upside down and cook the top of the naan directly on the gas flame.  Since the naan is wet and the pan is an iron pan, it will not fall off.

When you see the dark brown spots appear on your naan, it is ready to be taken off the tawa.

Use a spatula to take the naan off the pan and brush it with a little softened butter while the naan is still hot.

Continue with the rest of the dough balls.  The naan is beautifully spongy on the inside like this:

We had these naans for lunch with butter chicken - a marriage made in culinary heaven!

Note:  The tawa cost $20.00 at my local Indian Grocery store and was well worth the small investment.