Friday 9 May 2014

Homemade Naan - No Yeast Recipe

It was around August or September last year when I tried my hands on homemade Naan for the first time and what a moment it was! Nailed it at the very first attempt. I had guests over for dinner and they could not believe it wasn't from a restaurant. That was a day and another one was today. In my excitement of such huge success (I had not yet started my blog nor made any breakthroughs in baking), I forgot to bookmark the recipe and ever since I have been looking for that foolproof recipe. I did make a few attempts of replicating it a couple of times but could not achieve that perfection. Today, finally I decided to give it a shot again after being inspired by a college friend, who made it a few days back. Her recipe, passed on to her by her mom, however , had yeast and I still was on the lookout of my long lost recipe. So I took the help of a dear virtual friend of my regular food group and together we could fetch a recipe which was almost close to what I had made earlier. I made a few changes to her recipe and incorporated whatever I could remember from the recipe I had lost. Result was restaurant quality super soft homemade naan, perfect for my no onion no garlic Punjabi Chole!

Ingredients
2 cups bread flour (all purpose flour also works perfectly fine)
1/2 cup yogurt
1/4 cup warm milk
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
Black onion seeds (ideally you should be adding it on top while rolling; my family, however, likes it within the dough)
Oil for brushing the dough
Butter for brushing the naan

Direction
Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the yogurt and mix. Now slowly add the milk and start kneading the dough. It might feel a bit dry in the beginning. Do not add any additional milk or yogurt or oil. As you continue kneading it, the cream from the yogurt and milk will start loosening and the dough will come together beautifully. Kneading a over moist dough may result in difficulty while rolling. Now lightly grease the dough from outside and cover with a damp cloth for at least 30 minutes. 
Heat a iron tawa (preferably). Take a small plum sized ball out of the dough and roll it out. You can use a bit of flour while rolling. You can either roll it in folding pattern (roll and fold and roll) or simply roll  up a circle. Now brush the top with water (especially the sides) and sprinkle some kalonji (black onion seeds), if not added in the dough already, and put it on the hot tawa top side down. The water will stick the naan on the tawa and so now gently turn the tawa upside down with the naan directly facing the flame. For first timers, I would suggest keeping a close eye on the flame adjusting it from medium to low until light brown spots are formed. Do not leave it unattended else you will be left with a burnt naan! Gently remove from the tawa and brush the top with butter and/or coriander/garlic and serve hot with curry of your choice.
                                        
                                          


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