Wish you all a very happy, prosperous and peaceful new year.
Thanks to you all for your kind support here. Aayi and I have tried our best to keep this place going in 2008.
Recently, we have been having many technical problems with the site and we are trying our best to resolve them. I hope we can get around them soon.
Looks like new year is going to be a bit hectic for us, but we will surely try our best to post something here whenever possible.
I was planning to make naan for a long time now. It remained just a plan for a long time for some reason or other. Finally V gave enough push to actually try my hands on it. He usually does not like this very popular bread. But one of his colleagues is a great fan of garlic naan and V wants to invite him home sometime. I didn’t want to experiment on him, so I had to learn making these at home.
My first attempt was not very good. Though everything was fine, I rolled them a bit thicker than required for naan. When baked, they became like a thin crusted pizza base. I had also used 1 cup all purpose flour + 1/2 cup wheat flour for this. I think the wheat flour made it a bit dense. So this time, I made them real thin and I could not believe my eyes when they puffed up beautifully. Within minutes, we finished them all.
The pictures don’t do justice, as we really like eating them very hot, fresh out of oven, I did not spend time clicking pictures as they get cooled off. But I tried to click some anyway. When I make them next time, I will try to take more pictures.
Ingredients: 1 tea spn active dry yeast 2 tbl spn yogurt 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1/2 tea spn sugar 3/4 tea spn salt 1/2 cup milk 2 tbl spn water
Garlic-butter topping(Mix both): 1 tbl spn butter 1 tea spn garlic
Method: Heat the water to luke warm (it should be warm when you dip your finger in it. I normally microwave water for 10sec). Add yeast, sugar and salt. Leave it for 10mins till the yeast forms a froth(gets activated). Now add all remaining ingredients and make it into a dough. Knead for 3-4mins. Cover with a cloth or plastic wrap and leave it in a warm place for about 2-3hrs till the dough doubles in volume. Preheat the oven to 425F. Make balls from the dough and roll them. Do not make them too thick as they puff up when baked (I roll them into thicker than chapathi/phulka but thinner than alu paratha ). Apply a little butter on top. Line them on a lightly buttered cookie sheet. Bake in the oven at 425F for about 7mins till they puff up. Take out, apply the garlic-butter mixture on the top and keep it in the oven again. Bake for another 5mins till the top looks brownish.
Makes about 8 small naans
PS: – I kept a pizza stone in the oven and then placed the cookie sheet with naans on top of it. – You can reduce the amount of butter if you don’t like too much butter. – Avoid the garlic for plain naan. – Do not apply too much butter while baking to avoid the brown color. I like the color, so I bake it with butter. – If you do not have oven at home, roast the naans on a tava like normal chapathis.
