Naan, take 2: Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking

I've come a long way since the last time I made naan...about 3 weeks ago.

I have subsequently learned to knead. Since my last naan didn't rise properly, I figured I should go out of my way to figure out this leavened bread business. People have been making it successfully for a long time. I too can be one of these chosen people.

I took the same recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's "Indian Cooking", avoiding the more difficult recipe I heard about in a prominent Vancouver chef's self-titled "Vij's".

This time I didn't overheat the milk, being scared to kill the rising agents in the yeast. The mixture of sugar, yeast and milk got properly frothy in a wide-rimmed bowl. the only change I made to the recipe (intent on not messing up) was adding almond breeze instead of yogurt to the dough mixture of sifted flour, salt and baking powder, sugar, yeast mixture, oil and egg. Oh, I used extra-virgin olive oil instead of vegetable oil because my budget is tight so I only buy one type of oil...obviously olive wins. A splurge on good olive oil is better than a bunch of different flavourless oils anyday. Well it's not entirely true that all I have is olive oil...I do have sesame oil for high-heat sauté-ing, but I certainly wasn't going to put that in naan...what am I? A high-end Toronto fusion restaurant? Certainly not.

Anyway, the dough didn't really want to form into a ball like the recipe seemed to imply it happily would, but I didn't want to add too much extra liquid, so I got it to a point that seemed manageable and started the kneading process. I'm a slow kneader, being a novice, and had to judge its readiness more by the "smooth and satiny" feel than by the approximation of 10 minutes of pulling, stretching, lifting, folding, rotating and repeating.

I rolled the ball in oil and left it to rise in the oven on the lowest temperature, covered with plastic wrap, and waited.

An hour and a half later, preheating my broiler was a disaster waiting to happen. My neighbours hate me. Mostly they hate my fire alarm, which goes off without fail every time the broiler is used. But I preheated it anyway. I swear my oven is clean so it's not burning crumbs. Who knows why that alarm goes off? Anyway, I punched down all that wonderful risen dough and kneaded again...except it didn't say how long this time. Once? What does that mean? Or another 10 minutes? That's a big difference! I went with about 8 minutes of my slow kneading and then divided the dough into 6 balls. Keeping 5 of them covered I rolled the 6th into a...well, I'm not going to lie, it wasn't so much "tear-shaped". It was flat and thin enough, approximately the called-for 10" in length and 5" in width. I wasn't too concerned.

Then the most fun part: Slapping the naan onto the hot baking pan that's been sitting in the oven getting all warmed up. Apparently this is done because naan is traditionally cooked by slapping it on the side of a traditional tandoor oven. It sticks to the clay and cooks while the rest of your food cooks in the oven. Since all us suckers who don't own a tandoor have all this free space in our disappointingly normal ovens, we can just slap the naan onto a baking sheet to recreate the fun of the real thing. Not a bad second-best.

I put the pan in the middle of the hot oven for 3 minutes and then moved it up to the broiler for 30 seconds while I was rolling out the next naan.

See, the problem, and beauty, or naan is that it puffs up when baked, so when you put the baking sheet so close to the broiler, it has a tendency to reach out to the element like a child reaching for a shiny object. And like a child, it got burned. Actually, hopefully unlike a child, it lit on fire...just a little. This was before the smoke alarm went off, though, so at least I was only dealing with one situation at a time. I can't imagine having a child to take care of at the same time. I have a lot of respect for mothers who make naan in a non-tandoor oven with a renegade fire alarm...

Anyway, it was only slightly charred, which is actually kind of desirable with naan...and all the others puffed up without lighting on fire...so 5 out of 6 ain't bad.

I did remember, through all this, to wrap the fresh naan in a dish towel to keep them warm while the rest were cooking...

and the result? Not bad. Doughy, sweet, crisp outside. I'm not yet worthy of calling it a total success, but I feel like I'm getting somewhere good.

Next post: what I needed the naan for - scooping up Saag (my own variation on calalloo) and Lohbia aur khumbi (black-eyed beans with mushrooms).