NAAN BREAD - served by SUSAN

NAAN BREAD


From: Tastykitchen.com/recipes/breads/naan-bread
By: Heather Christo

Ingredients:

FOR THE YEAST BLOOM:
1 Cup Hot Water (110-115 degrees)
1 TBS Sugar
1 pckg Dry Active Yeast (7g package)

FOR THE NAAN:
1 whole egg
4 TBS Milk
4-1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tsp Kosher salt
1/4 cups butter, melted
2 whole garlic cloves, minced

Preparation:

In the bowl of a standing mixer combine the hot water, sugar, and yeast.  (I like to to rinse the bowl with hot water before I do this so that the cold bowl doesn't kill the yeast bloom). This should take about ten minutes.
When the yeast is done blooming, it should be nice and fluffy.
While you are waiting for the yeast, beat the egg and milk together in a small bowl.
In a separate bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients together.  When the yeast is ready, add half of the dry ingredients to the bowl.  Add the milk, and then the rest of the dry ingredients.  Mix until you have created a stiff shredded-looking dough.  Then beat with the dough hook and the mixer on medium for about 5 minutes (you could also knead this by hand on a lightly floured surface).
Place the dough in an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it sit in a warm place for a least an hour.  When the hour is up, the dough should be nice and puffy.  Break off golf-ball sized pieces and shape them into balls.  Place them on a parchment -lined sheet pan.  Cover the sheet pan with plastic wrap and let sit another 30-60 minutes until the dough has risen again.

When I went to roll the dough out on a marble counter, I did not even need any flour, but if you do, just use it sparingly.  Roll out the dough balls as thinly as you can and set them aside on the parchment-lined sheet pan. When you have rolled out all the dough, you can heat your grill or grill pan to medium heat.

While waiting for the grill to heat, melt your butter and garlic together (I discovered that a clove of garlic just infusing the butter was not a strong enough taste so I wound up mincing the garlic and letting it sit in the butter). Spray your grill with a little grill spray and then brush each side of the bread dough with the garlic-butter.  Grill on each side just until there are grill marks on the bread, and the dough starts to turn golden, then flip. It takes about 1 minute on each side.

They are the very best while still hot. I stacked them in a large sheet of tie foil and wrapped them together to keep them steaming hot.

Notes from Susan:

• Roll the dough balls out so thin that you think you can't possibly get it any thinner.
• For our Bunko, Blake cooked the Naan on the outdoor grill.  Susan's sister-in-law tried cooking them on an iron skillet on the stove and it worked great.  To make them look authentic, Mary charred them over the gas flame on the stove.