Topic: H4ppy-chris new naan recipe

[livo]

Thanks guys. I didnt go back to bare metal. I just gave it a really good scrub.  I'm getting the tawa hot and use plenty of water so it must be the oil. I'll go back to basics and drop the oil. To be honest though, I really dislike baking powder in recipes. It leaves a signature taste to me. From first viewing I never understood happy chris' time frame as his recipe is a chemical reaction risen bread.

[livo]

The food science of Naan.  (I'm not a food scientist so this could be way off the mark)
In my usual format I have analysed a standardised set of 10 Naan bread recipes and clearly, it is not a consistent recipe.  I even found a book recipe for Tandoor Roti that has identical ingredients, in very similar ratios, to naan. Obviously there would be similarity because it is a bread but there is essentially no difference at all.  That's a different question though.  The Naan recipes were all adjusted to 1 kg of Plain Flour. H4ppy Chris (Misty Ricardo) are the only one that I could find using Self Raising Flour so they were counted as having 1 kg of Plain Flour and 30 g of additional Baking Powder.  This doesn't really affect the end result.

Why? I've recently had the issue with non sticking of my naan to my Tawa and this led me to look at the different ingredient combinations and boy, don't they vary. From reading all 50 odd pages of this thread, I do know that others have had a naan drop off the Tawa when it is inverted, so it isn't just me.  The use of water isn't the problem because I used varying amounts with the same result.  Naans that fall off the Tawa.  I'm thinking that it was the inclusion of oil and maybe it is but I did find 1 recipe for Tawa Naan that does contain oil. 

I calculated the percentage of each dough for % of Hydration, Rising Agent, oil / ghee, sugar and salt. I divided the recipes into 2 groups of 5, Yeast and non-yeast (Baking Powder). 3 of the yeasted recipes also used Baking Powder as well.

The recipes used were:
Yeasted: VahRehVah, Khana Khazana, Old Indian Book, Breadmaker ,The Curry Guy   
Not yeasted: H4ppy Chris,   Misty Ricardo (counted as 1 recipe), No Yeast Generic, Celtnet, Tawa Naan, Tawa Naan 2.

My first question is Oil / Ghee in the dough. All Yeasted recipes except The Curry Guy used oil or ghee in the dough as did both of the non-yeasted "Tawa Naan" recipes.  Percentages ranged from 1.2% up to a massive 12%. Surprising to me was Tawa Naan 2 which contained 10%, or 100g of oil.  Does it stick to the Tawa or not?  I don't know yet.

Hydration: (Oil was counted as a wetting ingredient as well as egg and yogurt where included). Hydration ranged from 57% Misty Ricardo's slightly modified H4ppy Chris 58% up to 88 and 89 % of two of the yeasted naan.  From my bread baking days, these figures tend to be at the lower and upper extremes of bread dough hydration, 55% and 90% respectively

The Rising Agent % varied from 0.75 % up to 5 %. The 5 % recipe was the generic no yeast.  50 g of Baking Powder in 1 kg of flour???  but when modified from Self Raising Flour to Plain with extra BP, H4ppy Chris was 3.8% or 38g.  The Curry Guy had 4.5 % with 1.5% yeast and 3.0 % of Baking Powder.

Sugar ranged from only 0.6% (VahRehVah) up to H4ppy Chris' massive 10%. 100 g of sugar per kg of flour. Misty Ricardo cut this back to 60 and included salt. So that brings us to:-

Salt, which varied from 0% up to 2%, however there was often the instruction of "Salt to Taste".

A couple of interesting facts to do with Baking Powder are apparently that:
1) It will activate quickly with acid. Hence the absence of yogurt in the long wait / rest recipes like H4ppy Chris.  I saw this question asked somewhere in this thread.  The inclusion of yogurt with Baking Powder would most likely mean the naan must be cooked fairly soon after the dough is made otherwise it will have lost the chemical reaction fizz.
2) Double acting BP reacts to both acid and heat. This is why it still rises after 24 hours if acid (yogurt) is not used.

Hydration. The long rest periods for H4ppy Chris is to allow the low percentage of moisture ingredients to fully hydrate the flour.  The higher hydration dough, at 89%, will be a very wet dough resembling sourdough .  These would be very difficult to handle. The use of wet ingredients varied from all water to all milk, some water & some milk, yogurt or not, egg or not, oil or not.  Outside yogurt and BP (as above) this is pretty much a choice and some recipes state that these can be substituted and the ratios varied to taste or preference.

So that about sums it up.  Another worthless load of trivia from me and a few more hours spent on possibly useless information.  Now I need to see if I can use any of this to come up with a naan that doesn't fall off my %$#*++" Tawa.  ;D

Edit for extra comment; Naan or Tandoori Roti? Uses only Maida so it's a naan. No yeast so it's a Roti. Not stuffed with a filling so it could be a Roti, but if you do use a filling it's a naan. Both can be cooked by tandoor or tawa. The answer that works for me is that it's BIR naan.

[pete]

I was having a few issues with the naans falling off but now  they stick fine.  Use a temperature gun to measure temperature of the tava which should be 300 degrees C. Make sure you push the naan dough FIRMLY onto the tava and only cook the naan about 30 seconds before turning the tava over

[Garp]

Lovely looking naans Pete.

Not sure why your naans aren't sticking Livo. The only time I have had them falling off is when I've forgot to water the pan-side. Occasionally happens when I've cooked a few and am getting bored

My advice, for what it's worth, with the H4C recipe is make sure that you put plenty water on, especially around the edge; if the edge comes unstuck then the weight will pull the rest off. After you've done all around the edge, continue into the centre; the flour used in the rolling process, mixed with the water applied will make it feel sticky as you rub it around.

If that doesn't work, then you're on your own mate

[livo]

Thanks Pete.  After watching a few more videos this morning a temperature test was already on the "to do list".  Well, I don't have a heat sensor gun but I do have a thermocouple probe for my Digital Multimeter which will do the job.  I intend on getting this right so there will either be a lot of chook food naans or instant success.  The trouble is I now need to make many small batches of different dough to accomplish my test procedures.  The unsettled weather persists so I'll get started in a short while, but I'm also making a batch of Chicken and vegetable pies today.

The videos I watched this morning were;
The Curry Guy doing a Tandoor and a Tawa naan.
A guy who basically repeated H4ppy Chris' video but without the long rest in the fridge as well as using a non-stick Tawa and a blow torch which I have already done to alleviate my non-stick problem.
A girl who cooked garlic naan on a baking tray in the oven (yogurt in the recipe).
The School of Artisan Food naan (included Buttermilk, which I had previously considered but never tried) cooked on an upturned tray under the fan grill on the top of a multi-function oven.  I have both buttermilk and a multi-function oven.

The most confusing thing about all of this is Indian food nomenclature once again where there is just so much variation in the use of "names". This wide variance in ingredient combinations all falls under one name, ie; Naan.  Or depending on where you read, two names, ie; Naan and Tandoori Roti.  Is a Tandoori Roti just another name for a Naan? They seem to be the same thing to me, but then again this naan and that naan aren't the same thing.  The 4 videos above are all very different but apparently all naan.  A Baguette is a baguette is a baguette (to a point anyway), but white bread isn't all the same and there is good and not so good.  However, against this idea is the fact that restaurant / takeaway naan, here in Australia at least, is all pretty much the same no matter where it comes from so there is obviously a closely followed "preferred formula" within the commercial sector.

Every internet expert has a different interpretation. Naan has yeast - or sometimes not. Naan has no oil - but sometimes it does. Tandoori Roti is made with Atta flour - or it sometimes made with Maida (which makes it a naan).  I guess I'll just find something that I can cook and tastes ok.  I'll then call it Indian leavened bread.  ;D  or maybe I'll call it naan, or Tandoori roti.

[livo]

Thanks Garp.  I do have occasional success which is the real dilemma for me. Why do some stick and other not. 

My advice, for what it's worth, with the H4C recipe is make sure that you put plenty water on, especially around the edge; if the edge comes unstuck then the weight will pull the rest off. After you've done all around the edge, continue into the centre; the flour used in the rolling process, mixed with the water applied will make it feel sticky as you rub it around.

This is interesting in itself because some instructional videos say that it is important to remove the excess loose flour before adding the Glue Water.  Some say the dough should be loose / wet while others say it is important to have a relatively dry dough.  This is before adding the Glue Water.

I will win eventually as you know from my 30 year Mango Chicken journey.  I hope to make a good naan before I depart.  I have produced good / acceptable naan but I'd like to find the consistency.

[Garp]

I too remove the excess flour before watering. But there should be enough clinging to the dough to make a sticky surface.

[livo]

OK. Gotcha. 
I've made a scaled down, 200g flour batch of each H4ppy Chris, the Tandoori "Roti" and the generic restaurant style naan dough.  H4ppy Chris' needs to stay in the fridge for another hour, then bench rest for 2. The other 2 recipes were apparently ready to cook hours ago as they don't mention the long wait.  I'll bench them all to room temp for the 2 hours so I'll be cooking at around 8.30 pm my time.

The generic restaurant recipe could have been cooked within an hour of start.  I have them in the fridge as well already balled up. I will cook one of each later this evening on the Tawa and 1 of each using the upturned tray under the grill in the MF oven for comparison. I will do these exact recipes again one day to see if the wait time in the fridge makes any difference, good or bad.  I may even try another 3 or so recipes tomorrow depending on the weather.

I have big balls @ around 180 grams each, This is equal to H4ppy's 10 from a full batch but I will deliberately leave them quite thick for the tawa cook.  I'm about to test my tawa to see just how hot I can get it. 

Edit: After 2 1/2 minutes I have 460 degrees Fahrenheit and it sits at that on full gas wok burner.

[Bing]

How about just enjoying the recipe. H4ppy already put the leg work in for you. General opinion seems to point this recipe out as the preferred.

[livo]

After testing tonight Bing, I disagree. No salt gave a bland tasteless bread and, along with the other non-yeast recipe, a severe horrid after-taste of excessive baking powder that lingered for over an hour.. The winner for me was the yeast leavened Tandoori Roti and the one cooked in the oven tasted better than the Tawa cooked piece but didn't look as good. Baking powder is a big no from me. I'll elaborate in the morning.  The plus was 3 out of 3 Tawa cooked naan all stuck and looked good. Now to find a recipe that tastes good.