UK School of Artisan Food Naan

[livo]

Bobdylan, I'm afraid you are incorrect.  The only difference between strong bread flour and plain flour, or self raising, is about 2 - 3% more protein (Gluten) by mass.  This forms a stronger, ie; less leaky, gluten network which acts to better trap expanding gases, which provides better rise and hence a lighter finished product. Make 2 loaves of identical bread with the 2 different flours and see which is heavy and which is light. 

Buttermilk is low viscosity liquid and would be no different to milk or water used with yogurt. These naan are not heavy at all and in my opinion they are lighter than any BIR naan I have ever made..

Naga has said the oven cooked ones didn't turn out as well as the tawa attempt. That is to be expected. Make a batch yourself and see the difference first hand.  Don't forget to show us your photos.

[Naga]

So...I had another go at this naan bread recipe.

It was a last-minute decision as I had exhausted my supply of commercially-produced naans and chapatis, so, remembering what livo had said previously about preparing the dough as a single batch, that's just what I did. I also had to cut back on the resting times else dinner would have turned into a midnight snack, so both resting periods were restricted to 90 minutes only.

I used exactly the same ingredients as I did on the previous occasion, including fermented milk in place of buttermilk but excluding the double-dose of yeast!

Given my miserable experience with the oven method, I reverted to using the non-stick crepe pan. I heated it up over my large central hob burner until it was smoking and placed the naan dough onto the dry pan. I brushed the naan with melted butter and, this time, I kept a good eye on the cooking progress. I didn't allow it to burn and crisp this time, just cooking it sufficiently to let the dough bubble while delivering resonable charring on the base. I didn't time the process, but I reckon the dough was on the pan for around 90 seconds.

When I was happy with the look of the bread, I lifted it onto a plate and repeated the process with the second naan, finally placing it on top of the first naan and covering both with a damp tea-towel.

I got on with preparing the curry itself and, when it was ready, reheated the crepe pan and charred the uncooked side of the naans for around a minute, adding some more melted butter and a scattering of fresh coriander when they were served.





This time, the naans were perfect (for me, anyway!) - they were cooked through, they were light, fluffly and delicious and mopped up the Ceylon Chicken curry perfectly! If I say so myself, they compared more than favourably with takeaway or restaurant naans, a view seconded by my good lady wife, and I doubt very much if I'll buy another supermarket naan.

The naan conundrum has now been cracked as far as I'm concerned, so my thanks again to livo for flagging up the recipe and giving his observations on method.

[Naga]

Double post!

[livo]

 ;D  ;D ;D ;D

Don't they look good everybody?

Naga, after many years and lots of disappointment, it's a winner for me too.  Ya'll curry fans should give it a try.

[ScottyM]

Now thats a proper Naan.

Never been a fan of the self raising flour and baking powder version. I want my bread fermented and easy to digest.
I will make this tomorrow with a Poolish (pre ferment) and cook it in my Electric pizza oven. Will upload some photos and my thoughts after

[livo]

I doubt that you'll be disappointed. I've made this both with an without the starter and it is good. I haven't yet tried it in my pizza cooker but I'm positive it will work based on previous use with other naan recipes.  This one could only be better.

I look forward to your opinion.

[Sums24]

This recipe gets the thumbs up from me.     A very positive step forward and no Baking Powder anywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSxFpyS-kDQ
Closest I've come to a good naan so far, but I have another pan in the fire today.    It did want to drop off the tawa at the end of the inverted cook so again I'm wondering about the butter (oil) in the dough mix.

I already have a few little tweaks for this one I'll be trying out.  The written recipe describes a pre-ferment that doesn't feature in the video. Similar to a sourdough, this could boost the flavour.  The video just uses the ingredients from the pre-ferment and the actual bulk ingredients in one process but it did produce a good textured naan with nice flavour.  I mixed the dough 24 hours ago and refrigerated it till bench warming it for an hour before cooking.

Ingredients to do a full batch without the pre-ferment are:

500 g strong bread flour
10 g instant yeast  (3 tsp)
90 ml water
100 ml Buttermilk
150 ml milk
9 g salt (2 tsp)
20 g softened butter
seeds as desired.

Ends up at 68% hydration.
Bread mother or pre-ferment (or whatever else you want to call it) improves the keeping time of bread and enhances the complexity of the flavour profile.  These are 2 things that I feel have been missing from my naan up to this point.  Test is progress now.

Thank you so much for this. I used this recipe today. I

[Garp]

Or you could make real BIR naan, Sums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypVcrfz6dk

I believe it also works well in a tandoor.

[livo]

Welcome aboard Sums. This naan you've already tried (SOAF) is the closest I've come to making replica restaurant naan as it is available out here.  I rate it highly as have a few others on this site, (but not all). I've done it with the starter and "all-in".  It produces good naan either way.

Do let us know if you make any improvements.

[livo]

Or you could make real BIR naan, Sums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypVcrfz6dk

I believe it also works well in a tandoor.

(So) Garp, have you cooked this SOAF naan yet?