Curry Recipes Online
British Indian Restaurant Recipes - Starters & Side Dishes => Starters & Side Dishes => Breads (Naan, Puri, Chapatti, Paratha, etc) => Topic started by: livo on October 24, 2018, 01:01 AM
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This recipe gets the thumbs up from me. :D A very positive step forward and no Baking Powder anywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSxFpyS-kDQ (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.
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My G@d, Livo, if you write much more on the science of naan bread I will feel forced to actually try making some :) Seriously, though, well done on all your research efforts.
** Phil.
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All good Phil. Onward and upward from here now. What's a curry with a crappy naan? It has just taken a bit of experimentation, some very good advice, a fair deal of research and a bit of mess in the kitchen. I also think I've secured a tandoor oven so it's been a good week. :o Also, writing it all down here makes me think around things. I'm taking notes for myself along the way.
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I like the detailed description of technique in that video and will try to replicate this technique with H4C ingredients and a tawa cooking method next time I make naans. Unfortunately it's only a couple of weeks since I last made them, so I have a freezer full (ok, about ten really) so this will have to wait.
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Interesting stuff, Livo, and thanks for sharing your attempt to find your perfect naan.
I watched the video and it would have been good to have a look at the inside of the finished bread, and indeed, the bottom. For my preference, it looks a little doughy and heavy, but I could be wrong. Seeing the inside of one would help in that respect, so feel free to tear one in half and post a picture.
While I appreciate your search for a naan with lots of flavour, for me flavour is secondary to texture in this bread. I find the combination of Kalonji seeds, charred bits on the bread and brushing with butter ghee after cooking give sufficient flavour. I am, after all, going to use it to scoop up curry sauce which is the main flavour I want to encounter.
So I want my naan to be fluffy, light in most parts, possibly with a slightly crispier base in parts and a few lightly charred bits on top. H4C's gives me all that (though I may try a little salt next time - never thought it needed it really). Yeast-based recipes I have tried in the past haven't had a naan texture to me - often more like a crumpet (a la the Curry Guy's).
Anyway, keep up the search :)
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I cooked this dough recipe test run single naan on the tawa. The texture was fine garp. Not crumpety at all and possibly the closest I've come to tandoor one at home. I have another half batch in the fridge now which I'll cook in few hours so I'll put a picture up. This time I made the dough using the ferment method (not shown in the video). I let the mother ferment for 4 hours @ 30' C.
I also have another test dough ready to cook. A single naan, which will show two things. It will show if my baking powder is bad (out of date) and it will confirm whether or not H4ppy Chris' recipe has too much of it. I made a small batch of 3% self raising flour with my own plain flour and baking powder, sifted thoroughly and then used it to make the naan dough. I'm guessing I won't taste the baking powder, but we'll see.
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Phil,My G@d, Livo, if you write much more on the science of naan bread I will feel forced to actually try making some. Agreed.
Garp,While I appreciate your search for a naan with lots of flavour, for me flavour is secondary to texture in this bread. I find the combination of Kalonji seeds, charred bits on the bread and brushing with butter ghee after cooking give sufficient flavour. I am, after all, going to use it to scoop up curry sauce which is the main flavour I want to encounter.
So I want my naan to be fluffy, light in most parts, possibly with a slightly crispier base in parts and a few lightly charred bits on top. H4C's gives me all that (though I may try a little salt next time - never thought it needed it really). Yeast-based recipes I have tried in the past haven't had a naan texture to me - often more like a crumpet (a la the Curry Guy's).
Anyway, keep up the search
Totally Agree.
Bing, one look at your ingredients list,movie link can show you search with different cultural goal. Not for authentic Indian Bir Naan bread. Two very different breads you make with different ingredients to hand. Bir ingredients confirmed many times over for Naan dough.
Good food science.
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This recipe may not be an exact BIR naan Bing, but compared to other recipes (and I've tried lots), in my opinion it is far superior. This is the closest I've ever come to recreating the taste and texture of a Restaurant / Takeaway naan at home. (Australian naan that is). It was soft, flexible, smooth textured, airy and tasty. The full flavour probably comes from the ferment but I'll try again without and see what difference it actually makes. This could easily be brought back into line with BIR. Water, milk and buttermilk can easily be substituted with water, milk and yogurt as long as the same hydration is attained. The difference between yogurt and buttermilk will be minimal. If you want a nice naan, give this recipe a try. :)
My other test recipe this morning showed me the 2 things I expected it to. There is nothing wrong with my Baking Powder (even though past the "Best Before" date) and it produced a perfectly good Self Raising Flour at 3%. It clearly showed me as well that H4ppy Chris recipe is Baking Powder overload. For my tastes that is and I may just be sensitive to it. I ate the whole naan this morning for breakfast and it was delicious. No baking powder after taste at all.
Now I've got about 5 or 6 naan in the fridge to feed to my last remaining chicken.
The next thing I need to perfect is filling them with cheese to make Shahi Naan.
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I just cooked my daughter a cheese stuffed naan from one of the remaining balls of this dough. She says it is the best naan I've ever cooked. I did have a little taste and it is as close as I'll get to what I want without a Tandoor. I used about 1/2 cup of 50 / 50 tasty cheddar and mozzarella.
Hopefully one of those isn't far away. I could get 2 in Melbourne nearly brand spanking new, but the freight isn't worth it. Nothing in Sydney at the moment. The one I thought I could get keeps disappearing from the internet and the seller isn't replying. I cannot find an Australian supplier of Pakistani gas home portable tandoor ovens. Google just doesn't do it. ???
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I made another batch of this dough over the weekend, this time a full quantity as per video ingredient list. It produced enough for 6 small naan and probably 4 or 5 average size. Due to being very busy on Friday evening and all of Saturday I had to arrest the ferment stage in the fridge for 36 hours. It wasn't a problem and the final dough again cooked delicious naan.
Cheese naan is a problem for inverted tawa method. The cheese melts and causes the middle of the naan to belly downward under the weight. It leaks through and also causes the naan to unstick. Might have to go back to the pizza cooker for stuffed naan (but I'm hoping on bringing a tandoor home tomorrow. Fingers crossed.)
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Are cheese naan served in the Antipodes, Livo ? The only naan I have ever encountered in the UK (apart from plain, of course) are Peshwari and keema.
** Phil.
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Sure is Phil and it is very popular as well. Almost all restaurants and T/As have it on the menu and it is often listed as Shahi Naan. Searching for Shahi Naan does not find cheese naan recipes though so this name is a bit at odds. A Google video search for "Cheese Naan" provides many matches for it. I've just watched another 2 tawa cooked versions and one guy flips his over but only cooks it inverted for a short time (probably not done) while a lady just flips the naan and cooks both sides on the tawa.
I found the best cheese to use is a 50/50 mix of cheddar and mozzarella.
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A big thumbs-up from me for posting this naan bread recipe link, livo! I followed the recipe under the video (almost!) to the letter by preparing the ferment and then combining the rest of the ingredients the following day.
I did a test run last night using one dough ball on the gas hob using a shallow non-stick Tefal crepe pan and a blowtorch to char the top, It was an complete success - the best naan bread I have ever achieved! It was light, fluffy and very tasty.
Obviously, given the prep it's not the sort of recipe one can rustle up for an instant flatbread, but it's certainly worth making it in advance.
I misread the recipe describing the ferment and added 5g of yeast instead of the recommended 0.5g, but it didn't do any harm at all. I still added the recommended amount of yeast in the second-stage and everything worked out perfectly. Maybe I've just got old yeast! I also used fermented milk rather than buttermilk, but for all I know, it may be virtually the same thing anyway.
I didn't take any photos, and I still have to perfect my dough stretching technique as I didn't fully achieve the 'teardop' shape. I'll be making some more today and I'll maybe try the inverted-tray-in-the-oven technique this time, although my oven only does 230C rather than the 260C in the video.
I can see I'll have to invest in a pizza paddle as I'll be making these naans again and again. Highly recommended!
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I rate this recipe. Worth the effort and you don't really need to do the ferment if you don't want to. It does produce a flavoursome bread.
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For your ratings scale Naga are you comparing this recipe with Indian restaurant Naan bread, or store brought Naan bread? Please will you post photos with a cross section so we can all see the results please. :)
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Naga, the first stage of fermentation with yeast is growth, so putting too much in really isn't too big a problem. If you had put the correct amount in, the yeast colony would have grown anyway during the pre-ferment initial stages.
I've now made this recipe using both short and long pre-ferment (4 hours and over 24 hours refridgerated) as well as just doing a full ingredient batch without any pre-ferment (as shown in the video). They were slightly different in flavour profile but all 3 made naan that is fluffy, soft, flexible, well-coloured and tasty. As I've said previously, this naan recipe is the closest I've ever come to making naan that is like the ones bought in restaurants and takeaways (here in Australia). It is my go to recipe from now on. Only one other recipe I've tried is comparable. but I won't say any more than it is a full dairy, + egg, SR flour and fresh yeast, UK Deluxe Naan. No water. ;)
The 3 times I made this as mentioned above, I used actual buttermilk, but I've now also made this recipe using milk and yogurt instead and the results are equally as good. Buttermilk is just cultured milk anyway so there is very little difference.
As for time frame, H4ppy Chris' video instruction spans 24 hours or so if followed to the T. I think you could get this UKSoAF naan down to about 5 or 6 hours and still achieve very good results. From my last batch I had 4 leftover doughballs in the fridge and cooked one on day 5, The dough was just starting to get spots (didn't put my glasses on to examine further) but it cooked and tasted fine. The next day the remaining 3 were rubbish.
BobDylan, in my experience "store bought" packaged naan are dreadful. There is no comparison to a fresh one. This recipe may not be what you buy in your local Takeout over there, but it is very good. Give it a try and tell us what you think. This recipe produces naan like the ones I buy in Takeaways over here. You will find plenty of anecdotal evidence in this forum that Australian Indian Restaurant and British Indian Restaurant food are not the same, but this recipe is like the ones we get out here.
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Thanks for sharing your experiences, livo. It's a real time-saver when others describe their methods in detail and avoids a lot of grief pursuing goals down a dead end.
Sadly for me, the second attempt using the batch dough I refrigerated didn't work out as well as the initial trial. My oven just can't achieve the temperatures required to cook the naan quickly enough to stimulate internal air bubbles and surface charring before actually burning - as the photos will demonstrate.
(http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/imagehost/pics/13a42d14c05f8136dcdf20af3167dd63.jpg)
I pre-heated a metal baking tray in the oven at it's maximum temperature of 230C, and tried the 4 naans in both the centre and top of the oven. Cooking times varied between 6 and 10 minutes. The naans failed to bubble up and remained flat throughout, browning rather than charring on the tops. This compares against cooking on a pre-heated skillet on the gas hob where the naan bubbled up almost instantly. The downside is that the base was more charred than desirable, but, as Garp observed previously, a lttle crispness is ok and not at all unpleasant.
I couldn't compare my best effort to a proper restaurant or takeaway naan - it's a different beast altogether - but it was certainly much better than most supermarket offerings I've tried.
Anyway, although the resulting oven-baked naans didn't turn out as I would have hoped, they were still quite light and did their job in mopping up curry! I think I'll be sticking to the stovetop method though.
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I've had no joy with any naan in an oven. The pizza cooker works to a point but the tawa is good. Now I have a tandoor oven I have to learn to control the heat to get even cooking.
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I believe (it is almost certainly mentioned in a much older thread somwhere) that some people "jailbreak" pyrolitic ovens so that they can add and remove naans (etc) when the oven is in pyro mode ...
Cf. https://forums.egullet.org/topic/103127-hacking-pyrolytic-ovens-to-utilise-high-heat/, from 2007.
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Hi thank you for displaying your trials Naga, I can see the dough is quite dense in comparison to British restaurants Naan. The issue with lack of bubbles is at a guesstimate more down to the ingredients, bread flour is heavy when combining with yeast as is buttermilk. True British Naan should hardly weigh anything when cooked,with a light crispy crunch and bubbly interior.
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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.
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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.
(http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/imagehost/pics/64cf54e79edeb900a9e600cb4f14408f.JPG)
(http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/imagehost/pics/e75db4f4272f9503a44cde4e7aed38e5.JPG)
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.
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Double post!
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;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.
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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
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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.
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This recipe gets the thumbs up from me. :D A very positive step forward and no Baking Powder anywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSxFpyS-kDQ (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
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Or you could make real BIR naan, Sums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypVcrfz6dk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypVcrfz6dk)
I believe it also works well in a tandoor.
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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.
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Or you could make real BIR naan, Sums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypVcrfz6dk (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?
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I made naan last night using this recipe as the main guide but modified it slightly to include aspects from other things going on at the moment. The result was the best naan I have ever made at home.
I've been recently exploring preferment pizza / calzone dough with retardation by refrigeration as well as sourdough baking in both white and wholemeal / grain breads. As a bit of an experiment I included some of my white sourdough starter culture in the preferment of this SOAF naan recipe and let it bubble away on the kitchen bench for about 4 hours before building the naan dough. This slightly changed the hydration of the pre-ferment to almost a heavy batter consistency.
Other changes to the liquid / flour ratio were calculated based on the inclusion of the starter and I also added a 60 g egg to the mix (XXXXX's Deluxe naan). Just to see what would happen I used Self-Raising flour instead of Plain in the final dough build along with the instant yeast. No superfluous baking powder was used.
Due to a few unforeseen events of the afternoon, the final dough was allowed to sit on the bench for longer than expected and the bench rise was significant to say the least. I punched it down to degas the dough before dividing and making 6 small rounds. The texture and characteristic of the dough was outstanding and the resultant inversion tawa cooked naan were without doubt the best I've ever achieved.
A bit of work involved and maybe not how a fast-paced BIR would do it, but absolutely worth the effort.
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The Deluxe version. Sourdough starter preferment, Self Raising flour plus egg.
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Hi there (from France sorry for the crappy english)
I shortly had a look at the pre-ferment phase and it's really very close to a "biga" which is also one kind of pre-ferment used mainly for neapolitan pizze...Same thing for the dough high hydratation rate with strong flours.
If the idea is to keep things as close as possible to the way you are supposed to prepare and cook an high hydratation pizza, I think you would also need to reduce the quantity of yeast used, which is really A LOT in this recipe. Too much yeast alters your dough flavor and can cause it to "overferment" (don't know if it's an english word lol)
For the pre-ferment phase I would use
200g strong flour (W>270)
100g water
5g fresh yeast or 1,66g of dry yeast
Mix everything very slightly, don't knead as it would develop the glutinous network which is not what we wants, then cling film it and right to the fridge for 48h
For the final dough I would add to our pre-ferment
400g liquid (you can use a mix of water, yoghurt, milk, up to your preferences)
500g strong flour (W>270)
15g mix of salt/sugar (up to you)
Mix the preferment with water until it melts into some kind of paste, then add 50% of the flour, mix, add sea salt, mix, and add the other 50% and mix again for 15-20mn (robot). If you don't have any robot, you can use the autolysis method but you'll have to wait longer until the dough is nice and elastic
(let it rest for 30 min then make the dough balls and let it rest for only 2 hours and your dough it's ready to use.
If you want the best result, cook your naan just below your oven resistance, preheated to its max setting. You can also begin cooking on a pan (or preferably hot tawa), just slightly wet your naan base before you put it on the tawa, and then, finish cooking under your oven grill.
I'm not a naan specialist, but the recipe looks like a pizza recipe "adapted" to naan cooking...
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Thanks for that, Khemas
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By resistance I mean, the grill part...
What's the english name for that ? Resistor ? Weird I doubted of many words I used, but not this one !!!
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OK, now I understand why you used "resistance" ! In practice we just call it the grill "element", where "electric[al] element" is implied; only an electrical engineer would think of it as a resistance (or resistor) although of course that is exactly what it is, and why/how it works ...
** Phil.
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Useful information khemas and completely correct. There is a lot of similarity between the many different applications of pre-fermenting. The use of a processed yeast, sometimes called spiking, is dependent mainly upon time schedules. If you have 3 days it is not required, or at least only in small quantity. If you need to cook same day the biga or poolish or barm or starter will require some help.
Purist artisan Bakers frown upon the practice but commercial bakeries have no problem.
I've made this naan recipe several different ways from same day to 3 days and you are correct in saying that the yeast is too much for the slow version. For "instant" naan it is required but it will taste different.
The video actually shows the all-in approach with no preferment at all.
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I'm not a naan specialist, but the recipe looks like a pizza recipe "adapted" to naan cooking...
That is pretty much what it is.
Nan, pronounced naan (or narn) is a general use word that translates to "bread" or more specifically leavened flat bread. Consequently there is no single correct naan recipe just as there is no single correct bread recipe. We could just as easily adapt a pizza dough recipe to make a loaf or a Focaccia.
I have a very old photocopied page out of an Indian recipe book which is for Tandoori Roti.
125 g Natural Yogurt
450 g plain flour
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder [Note: You now have a very weak (5 / 450 X 100 = 1.1%) Self Raising flour]
1/2 tsp salt [Note: In some countries salt is included in SR Flour]
1 1/2 sachets fast action yeast [Note: this is equal to 3 tsp or 10.5 g]
1 level TBSP ghee or unsalted butter
1 medium egg
150 ml warm milk
These ingredients appear to me to be very much the same as would appear in the Deluxe UK naan and some would argue that it isn't a roti at all. With this amount of yeast the suggested rise time is between 1/2 and 3/4 hour before shaping and cooking.
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Are cheese naan served in the Antipodes, Livo ? The only naan I have ever encountered in the UK (apart from plain, of course) are Peshwari and keema.
** Phil.
I've seen cheese naans on menus here in Scotland, and of course Irn Bru and Mars Bar naans too.
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:lol:
My favourite is the haggis and Buckfast naan.
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:lol:
My favourite is the haggis and Buckfast naan.
Definitely a delicacy Garp.
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https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/food-and-drink/2149297/irn-bru-inspired-treats-to-get-you-in-the-spirit-of-baking/ (https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/food-and-drink/2149297/irn-bru-inspired-treats-to-get-you-in-the-spirit-of-baking/)
This article doesn't mention naan but I look forward to a picture of your attempts. Being a carbonated bevie you could use it as the leavening agent and avoid the metallic taste of excessive baking powder.
I imagine haggis would be along the lines of the keema naan. Fusion recipes are taking off and the Mars Bar might be a real winner dessert naan sprinkled with icing sugar and served with ice cream. My daughter won a Mars Bar cheesecake a few years ago. It was huge and took 2 days to make and 2 weeks to eat. Probably better to use this naan recipe as the base to avoid the baking powder after-taste.
Cheese naan is not just an Australian thing as the number of hits from a search will show. It is actually a thing in India.
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:omg: :omg: :omg:
Cheese naan found in the UK!!!
Dishoom
All day menu.
Cheese Naan
Cheddar melted inside (V) 3.90.
:confusing3: and way too expensive. After exchange rate that's nearly double what we pay over here.
Cheddar melted inside of all things. What next? Mango Chicken as well?
I think I'll have a little lay down.
:pill: :pill: :pill:
Off topic.
The Cheese naan was found by accident when I investigated from this,
https://iamafoodblog.com/dishooms-ruby-chicken-curry-recipe/ (https://iamafoodblog.com/dishooms-ruby-chicken-curry-recipe/)
Does anybody have the Dishoom Cookery book?
https://www.dishoom.com/cookery-book/ (https://www.dishoom.com/cookery-book/)
Is it any good?
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Check this out, some fine looking naans, couldn't understand how they appeared to have a dimpled and uniformed pattern prior to cooking, so pay particular attention to the guy forming them starting at 5.15 sec of video. Well worth trying.
https://youtu.be/VZbUXCasbTo
Regards pap rika
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Very good pap rika. I already have one of those pizza crisping pans so I'll give it a try. I know it's common to use the fingertips to stipple the naan which gives the characteristic bubbles but that method provides 2 functions which is a great idea.
I notice at the end of the video that the cheese is added and melted on top of the naan and it does look pretty good. I came across this in a menu yesterday (Punjab Covent Garden uses smooth light French Cheese https://www.punjab.co.uk/file_upload/Punjab-takeaway-menu.pdf (https://www.punjab.co.uk/file_upload/Punjab-takeaway-menu.pdf)).
A problem I still have is finding the right type of cheese to use. The naan sold out here are all very similar. I've tried just using grated block cheese (mild tasty and cheddar) but they just aren't right. I've now read that cheddar is used but I've also seen that Mozzarella is used so I'll try a blend of the 2 next time. I don't think it's just mozzarella because it does have flavour and mozzarella is a very bland thing on it's own. Perhaps it is a Colby.
One of the UK BIR Cheese naan I found yesterday (and there are plenty, even a few in Scotland) uses Red Leicester but that isn't in the naan out here.
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Cheers livo,
Surprising what little nuggets of information can be obtained on closer observations. Evident also is their lack of flour when shaping the dough, their preference being the use of cooking oil which appears to increase the elasticity of the product whilst retaining the moisture content
Ref your cheese choice have to agree mozzarella would not be my choice, mature cheddar would be my preference for its strong and creamy texture.
Regards pap rika
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Yes, the hands of the woman loading the plate are wet with oil halfway up her arms. I assumed water at first but the naan don't require any stickiness on a horizontal cook surface. I'm always amazed at just how easily pros handle dough.
Somehow I missed the first part on first view of the video. Grated cheese followed by the garlic butter from the bucket.
Flour, yeast, salt and when asked, no egg. The thing that is common in many naan videos of this type is that there is no prolonged delay (24 hours or overnight fridge rest). Mixer, balls, shaping and cooked. There must be some short rest to allow gluten to relax. Either that or it is a very loose dough.
The other video from the same series, Shadi Bakery Croydon is good to watch as well. Same recipe.