Naan

Yesterday I posted about the Chickpea Curry we made last last Sunday and today I'm posting about the Naan we made to go with it. I'm super excited to post this recipe because it was really fun to make and turned out really, really good! Naan is a type of flat bread. We've made it once before a looooong time ago and couldn't really remember how it went. So we found a recipe on All Recipes to try.

Naan
Makes a lot

1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp from a jar)
1 cup warm water
1/4 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons soy milk
1 egg, beaten
2 teaspoons salt
4 1/2 cups bread flour (may not need all of it)
2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 cup butter

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand about 10 minutes, until frothy. Stir in sugar, milk, egg, salt, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 6 to 8 minutes on a lightly floured surface, or until smooth. Place dough in a well oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and set aside to rise. Let it rise 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in volume.

Punch down dough. Pinch off small handfuls of dough about the size of a golf ball. Roll into balls, and place on a tray. Cover with a towel, and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.


During the second rising, preheat grill to high heat. Melt butter in microwave and stir in garlic. At grill side, roll one ball of dough out into a thin circle.


Lightly oil grill. Place dough on grill, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until puffy and lightly browned.


Brush uncooked side with butter, and turn over. Brush cooked side with butter, and cook until browned, another 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from grill, and continue the process until all the naan has been prepared.

Naan in various stages of completion. The one on the left is a bit overdone.


Perfect Naan!


My take on it: We made mostly as directly, substituting soy milk for regular milk and putting the garlic in the melted butter instead of kneading it into the dough.

The hard part of this recipe was rolling and grilling the dough. We used a two-man process. I rolled out the dough while my husband grilled it. I think rolling it out really thin helped them cook better. That was mentioned in the comments to the original recipe over at All Recipes. We used our grill pan to cook them on the stove top and it worked out perfectly. We could grill three naan (naans?) at a time. Even with three going at a time, it still took quite awhile to process them all. We ended up with 19 total!

The entire recipe from start to finish took about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. So definitely not a recipe for a week night. However it was totally worth the time and effort on a weekend.

The naan was sooooooo delicious. We gobbled them up. And there were so many of them that we enjoyed them all week long. I could definitely see making a whole bunch of these at once and freezing them individually so we can pull them out to have with dinner at any time.

Bottom line: Definitely making this again!