Tales of naan-ier

The past few days I have been experimenting with making some kind of Indian-style bread recipe. Because I basically generated this with a lot of guesswork and a little bit of prompting from the interwebz, it doesn't really follow any proper recipe for chapati, roti, naan or other recognised variant. It's just what worked based on what I have generally in the flat anyway.

Since the title says this is "Tales of..." I think I should tell you the whole saga of how this came about and how the recipe developed.

It started a few nights ago when I had planned to make my curry recipe, only then realised I didn't have any rice to go with it - after having started cooking it. So my thought process whent something like this:

1. Maybe I will have naan instead!
2. I don't have any naan.
3. Maybe I can make naan?
4. I don't know how to make naan.
5. Maybe I can figure it out all by myself!
6. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, better eat something else and save the curry for another day.
7. But I want to figure it out all by myself!
8. Alright, I'll make something else, but I'll also try making naan.
9. YES!
10. ...
    
11. Okay, what goes into naan?

I figured out that I probably wanted some milk (have), flour (have), water (in the tap - have). But maybe it needs egg as well. And maybe it's a leavened bread, in which case I was stuck because I didn't have any yeast or other raising agent. (As it happened, hidden in a different cupboard was some self-raising flour, but I forgot about it at the time because I was in hyperactive mode.)

To the Interwebz, Boy Wonder!

Interwebz quickly confirmed that naan does indeed usually have egg in it, and also that it usually has yeast in it. However, it also informed me that I would want sunflower oil (have) and several recipes had yoghurt in them (bugger - I'd just put it all in the curry sauce I was making!) One recipe - for roti bread - did NOT have egg or raising agents of any kind in, so I went with that one and it worked okay. I was satisfied that it would not have been a disaster if I had gone with this plan in the first place.

But now I had curry for the next couple of days lined up - I had a chance to EXPERIMENT! I could try some of those other ingredients to see if I could make the recipe work any better.

Yoghurt was the most interesting new ingredient to try, so I did that one first and it was a definite improvement. I was also adding a bit of sugar at this stage, although when I rang Mother Dearest she pointed out that the sugar in the naan recipe was probably there to activate the yeast and not really for flavour. Still, I remembered naan having a slightly sweet taste at Indian restaurants so I decided to stick with it.

Although it was an improvement, I wasn't really happy with the recipe, as it seemed too stiff. I opted to reduce the amount of flour the next time and see if that helped. It did a bit, but not much. I realised that the problem was that the bread was just too stodgy and flat in general: it needed a raising agent or it wasn't going to work. I would have tried the egg as well, but I don't eat eggs often enough and buying a half-dozen box just for one egg for my recipe would be very wasteful. So the recipe iI wanted to try next was not quite naan, but at least naan-ier than the previous goes (so, tales of naanier in the title, geddit!?)

Unfortunately, I had run out of curry to try it with.

Yesterday, though, the local supermarket had a special offer on ready-meal curry and I can't resist a special offer. So I thought, "Since I'm having special offer curry anyway, I may as well continue the experiments!" Quick consultation with Mother Dearest who advised buying baking powder as well (lasts longer than self-raising flour, which I don't use very often) and I was all set to head home and try again. At home I discovered the self-raising flour in the tin - which as it happens has kept very well indeed, so that was all good. the baking powder came with instructions for how to use it to replace self-raising with plain flour, so I can make the following recipe with either now. Since I use plain flour more than self-raising, I always have it in the flat, so it's worth knowing the conversion.

Anyway, so I had decided to give it a go, and this time I was very pleased with the results.

Here's what I did:

Snowdrop's Naan-ier Bread:

Ingredients

(All tablespoons were rounded measures, except the yoghurt which was just as full as the yoghurt's own cohesion would allow)

• 5 tblspns self-raising flour and 5 tblspns plain flour (or, going by the advice on the baking powder pot, 10 tblspns plain flour and approximately 2 level tspns baking powder)
• 5 tblspns yoghurt
• 2 tblspns milk
• 2 tblspns sunflower oil
• 1/2 level tspn sugar

Preheat oven to 230 degrees C (450 degrees F, Gas Mark 8). My oven was set at 225 C, but I know that it cooks quite hot and quickly compared to the instructions in most recipe books, so I've rounded up to the nearest 10 degrees C.

Put all ingredients into a bowl and mix together, first gently with a wooden spoon, then as the flour thickens the yoghurt and the dough forms, start to knead it with hands. Once thoroughly mixed, cut into pieces and roll out on a flat surface using flour to prevent sticking. Makes 2-3 large pieces or 6-8 small pieces.

Place on a (greased) baking tray or griddle and bake for 12 minutes, turning halfway through to cook both sides.

***

And this is what it looked like (this is only half of the full quantity, because I ate the othe rhalf before I thought of taking a photo - you can also see that I nibbled the bottom corner already on this piece, too!):


If anyone tries it, I'd love to know how well it works for you as well - I liked the results a lot, but I figure it's always worth having a second opinion.