Homemade Naan
The Dough recipe is reprinted from ‘Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day’ and the Naan recipe is gently adapted from the same source. This does make a lot of dough. You can use it to make the recipes found here, here, here and here or you can halve or quarter the recipe.
Ingredients for the Master Bread Dough:
- 6 cups warm (but not hot) water
- 3 Tablespoons Kosher salt (if using table salt, reduce to 2 teaspoons)
- 3 Tablespoons active dry yeast (or SAF Instant Yeast)
- 13 cups (3 pounds, 7.25 ounces by weight) all-purpose flour
Mix all ingredients together in a 12 quart bowl or container until an even but shaggy dough forms. You do not have to knead it. Simply cover loosely with plastic wrap or a lid. Do not cover tightly or this might happen to you! Allow the dough to rise for two hours at room temperature or until the dough has more than doubled in bulk. It may collapse back in on itself or it may not. Either way, after it has doubled you can either put it into the refrigerator to use within the next two weeks or you can use part of it immediately.
Ingredients for the Naan:
- Ghee
- Master Bread Dough
- all-purpose flour
Dust the surface of the dough with a generous amount of all-purpose flour. Pull up a portion of dough and use a sharp knife to cut off a portion about the size of a golf ball. Place on a clean, lightly floured counter top. Use your hands or a rolling pin to spread the dough out as thin as you can get it. If the dough is fighting you a lot (i.e. springing back to its original form) you can let it rest for a couple minutes and tackle it again. It will stretch eventually! For the naanwiches, I stretched the naan to about the shape of a single chicken breast. That is totally unnecessary, but it made the sandwiches prettier and (I think!) easier to eat.
Place a heavy-bottomed pan with a lid over high heat. I used a hard-anodized cast-aluminum pan, but cast-iron works really well here, too. When a few drops of water flung onto the pan from your fingertips skitter across the surface before evaporating, the pan is ready to use.
Spoon about 2 teaspoons of ghee into the hot pan and swirl to coat. Gently place the stretched dough into the pan and cover with the lid immediately. Lower the heat to medium/ medium-high. Fry for one to two minutes before lifting the lid. This allows the underside of the bread to fry while the top side steams.
Lift the lid to check the bread. If the underside is a rich golden brown around the edges and on large areas of the center, flip the bread. Cover again and cook for an additional two minutes or until the second side is also a deep golden brown. Remove naan to a rack and repeat until you have the desired number of naans. These are best served within an hour of being made.
