Homemade Garlic Naan

Of late, my little one at home has become a huge fan of Garlic Naan. Anytime we eat out now, she says we can eat Thai or Chinese as long as I pick up Garlic Naan for her!

I thought this would be a good one to try at home. I've never tried this at home before. So, there's a challenge.

The base is quite similar to making pizza base at home. Flour, yeast, milk mixture - the couple of unique things that go in here are yogurt and ghee. I did google for the recipe and found this very nice link with a video of making the naan - http://video.about.com/indianfood/Naan-Recipe.htm by Natasha Levitan. But, this recipe includes eggs but I did skip the eggs as I did not have any and wasn't going to run to the store for 1 egg!

To begin with, get all your ducks in a row. You'll need All purpose flour, milk, ghee, yeast, salt, yogurt, and sugar.

To about 4 tbsp of warm milk, add 2 tbsp of sugar and 1 packet ( 2 tbsp ) of rapid active yeast. Make sure the milk is just luke warm and not hot - that will kill the yeast.

 

After mixing the yeast well with the warm milk, set it aside for about 30 mins. The yeast mixture will become all frothy and that is just wonderful for the dough to rise.

 

Now, take about 4 cups of all purpose flour in a mixing bowl. Add 11/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt.

Add the frothy yeast to this.

 

Next, add about 2/3 cups of milk to this.

 

Add about 1 cup of yogurt to this.

 

Add 3 tbsp of ghee on top.

 

Mix everything well and knead the dough for about 10 mins. This dough is very sticky - but do not add more flour to make it smooth. If you don't want to knead with your hands, use the spatula and mix well.

 

Move to another well oiled bowl and make a ball and let it sit in the center. Make sure the dough is coated well with oil from the sides.

 

Cover with a breathable cloth and let sit in a warm place for about 2-3 hours. I kept it inside my oven just as a resting place - if you live in Alaska and its super cold, you can pre heat the oven and then keep this in there.

 

After 3 hrs, you can see how much the dough has raised. It becomes almost double the quantity.

 

Take out the dough and knead well again for about 5 mins and then divide the dough into equal parts and make balls out of it and set aside.

 

Roll out each ball into an oval gently. Remember that the dough is really soft and might tear if you roll it out too much or too thin.

 

Use the oval shaped dough and place it over your hands and move your hands up and down to stretch the dough and to get a naan shape. 

 

Place the naans in a baking sheet and brush some ghee or butter on top.

 

Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and slightly roasted garlic pieces.You could just add chopped garlic but I like to roast it for about a min just to get some of that raw smell out. And then they get double roasted in the oven and becomes crispy and flavorful.

 

Here's the important part. Pre heat the oven at the highest possible setting and set the oven to broil too. The original tandoors have a high temperature that can go up to 800 or 900 F degress and the naans cook in a min. But, the best we can do at home is upto 500F with a conventional oven. Which is still good. And being on broil cooks the naan from the top too.

Just bake these in the oven for about 3-4 mins or until the tops are a golden brown.

 

Tada...see, that took only about 3-4 mins. And they remain soft inside just as they should be.

 

Enjoy the homemade Garlic Naan's hot with some Paneer Butter Masala or any other great side dish. I served this with PBM which will be my next post. Until then, here are the naans!

 

 

Enjoy. Peace Out!