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Homemade Naan


Simul Parikh

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37 minutes ago, Simul Parikh said:

Hey - anyone with experience making naan? On skillet or baked? Anyone try grilling? Having a little dinner party and wanted to see if I can make at home rather than buying it.

-S

Tandoors for the home can be under $1,000, but I suspect that, like with many things, the most you can get is what you pay for.

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41 minutes ago, Simul Parikh said:

Hey - anyone with experience making naan? On skillet or baked? Anyone try grilling? Having a little dinner party and wanted to see if I can make at home rather than buying it.

-S

I was going to try it in a cast iron skillet, but haven't yet, just saw on a home cooking website.  If I had an outside grill with a pizza stone, I would do that, but alas I don't.  It doesn't look too complicated.

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I've made chapati at home and they are fairly easy to make, even got them to puff up. It's just time consuming, at best you're making one or two at a time.  If you are making a large batch, you'll probably need to devote an hour of hands on time just for bread making (mixing the dough, rolling them out, cooking them off).  

If you have plenty of time, go for it. If time is short, probably best just to buy some. 

I'm going to assume you're not as quick as these guys!

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47 minutes ago, Tweaked said:

I've made chapati at home and they are fairly easy to make, even got them to puff up. It's just time consuming, at best you're making one or two at a time.  If you are making a large batch, you'll probably need to devote an hour of hands on time just for bread making (mixing the dough, rolling them out, cooking them off).  

If you have plenty of time, go for it. If time is short, probably best just to buy some. 

I'm going to assume you're not as quick as these guys!

Only buying them for back up. I gots nothing but time this Saturday. 

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Did a trial run of Food52 recipe. The dough didn't rise, I'm not sure what happened. I put yeast in warm water and it seemed activated after 15 min. So, grilled it on griddle. About 2 min per side on high heat. It tasted more like a chapati. Didn't look bad. Would have been acceptable, but it wasn't naan.

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1 hour ago, Simul Parikh said:

Did a trial run of Food52 recipe. The dough didn't rise, I'm not sure what happened. I put yeast in warm water and it seemed activated after 15 min. So, grilled it on griddle. About 2 min per side on high heat. It tasted more like a chapati. Didn't look bad. Would have been acceptable, but it wasn't naan.

Good to know. Let me know if you find a recipe that works better.  

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On 11/7/2016 at 10:23 AM, ktmoomau said:

I don't have a grill - so the one I was looking at is by Carey Nershi at food52.com.

But I read through the comments before I make things on food52 just to check out suggestions, such as that recipe lacks salt (which many like, but some don't) so some people suggest adding between 1/4-1/2 tsp.

Thanks for posting this - it was very timely, as I've been cooking a lot of Indian recently. I have no handle on authenticity but the taste and texture were great (yes it needs salt).

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4 hours ago, Simul Parikh said:

Did you follow it exactly ?

Ok, now I am going to have to make this over the weekend.  First maybe tomorrow I am going to have to go taste test some indian bread at a restaurant because right now I wouldn't know the difference between chapati (which I saw a good Andrew Zimmern recipe for, as well, just FYI (not on Food52, on twitter, but I saved it to my pinterest to retrieve it) and naan by taste.  OK so I just read more about the difference between naan and chapati.  

And it looks like traditionally naan doesn't have any whole wheat in most modern recipes (although ancient Persian recipes likely did).  Two threads I found that look interesting with recipes, so maybe it would be one to try?  https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070305095844AAy2Mio  OR https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/oct/02/how-to-make-perfect-naan-bread-recipe

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This has made me really want to know the differences. I thought I did, but not really. This was a helpful resource! I think you're right, naan should not have any whole wheat flour. 

Thinking about it, I didn't have adequate baking soda. I had baking powder and the yeast. Maybe without the soda, that's why no fermentation or rise? The other thing, is I cut the recipe into 1/3. I wonder if that 1/3 amount of yeast was just not enough. 

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On November 7, 2016 at 10:59 AM, Tweaked said:

I've made chapati at home and they are fairly easy to make, even got them to puff up. It's just time consuming, at best you're making one or two at a time.  If you are making a large batch, you'll probably need to devote an hour of hands on time just for bread making (mixing the dough, rolling them out, cooking them off).  

If you have plenty of time, go for it. If time is short, probably best just to buy some. 

I'm going to assume you're not as quick as these guys!

 You're right about the time required. Grew up doing this every single weekend-my family would  devote an hour or two to making the chapati ( which we call rotli)  for the week, as we ate them with dinner every day.  It goes pretty quickly if you have one person rolling, and another person manning two stoves to cook them.  If you butter them, they keep reasonably well in the refrigerator for a week and freeze OK too  ( even the refrigerated ones are clearly not as good as fresh made, but still acceptable to eat ) so they're definitely one of those things that if you make them, you should make extra while you're at it to keep for another day.

  

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2 hours ago, Simul Parikh said:

This has made me really want to know the differences. I thought I did, but not really. This was a helpful resource! I think you're right, naan should not have any whole wheat flour. 

Thinking about it, I didn't have adequate baking soda. I had baking powder and the yeast. Maybe without the soda, that's why no fermentation or rise? The other thing, is I cut the recipe into 1/3. I wonder if that 1/3 amount of yeast was just not enough. 

Yeah, sometimes in baking you can't cut recipes like that.  I am just not sure- but it could be old yeast or just not enough yeast.  The soda shouldn't affect what the yeast is doing for fermentation- that is more dependent on sugar and yeast doing it's thing, you should know though if your dough rose or not and I thought you said it did.  It could definitely effect the puffiness as it acts to create more air bubbles as it interacts with yogurt and then expands air bubbles during the cooking process to make it puffier.

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22 hours ago, Simul Parikh said:

Did you follow it exactly ?

I did. It took a few attempts to get the skillet to the right temperature, but when it was the top of the bread bubbled up nicely and the bottom was nicely browned and lightly charred. And I cut the recipe in half, and with half the amount of yeast there were no problems.

Again, no idea if it's truly naan, but fresh bread hot off the skillet is a joy regardless of authenticity.

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On 11/9/2016 at 1:31 PM, Simul Parikh said:

Did a trial run of Food52 recipe. The dough didn't rise, I'm not sure what happened. I put yeast in warm water and it seemed activated after 15 min. So, grilled it on griddle. About 2 min per side on high heat. It tasted more like a chapati. Didn't look bad. Would have been acceptable, but it wasn't naan.

Did you put it in a warm enough place? Ambient temperature plays a major role here.

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Haven't made it at home yet. I've made puri many times which is hard to do because it's easy to burn one side and loose the golden brown/yellow color. My mother is able to make 4 or 5 at the same time however my skills limit me to 2 at once in a Indian style wok filled with hot oil.  

chapati style frying pan might help to make the naan than using a  skillet.  

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Okay, for "An Elegant Night With Simul: A Night to Remember" (not catchy, but still meaningful), we made them again. This time, the lady friend did the dough ("you can cook, leave the baking to me"). It rose. But not double. Made 16 small ish naans. One for each person (oops forgot me and her). People really liked it. And Indian friend from India asked for recipe and methods. I didn't get to try one, but lady friend did and she didn't love - she doesn't like it to taste "doughy" and it certainly needed even more salt. She's from Arkansas, so what does she know?

I kind of want one of those Uuni ovens for naan and pizza ...

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