Last week we made Dhal, which is an Indian soup kind of dish, served with Naan bread.
We gave you the recipe for Dhal and now we will share with you how to make the Naan bread.
It is very simple and you can make it while you are making the Dhal.
We start of with a very basic dough:
7 g of dry yeast
2 1/2 dl (1 cup) water
50 g (1/4 cup) sugar
1/2 dl (3 tablespoons) milk
1 egg
2 teaspoon salt
600 g (4 1/2 cups) flour
Oil
Butter for frying
In a large bowl mix yeast and lukewarm water, stir and let sit for 5-10 minutes till it starts to bubble.
Add in sugar, milk, egg and salt. Mix together.
Add in some of the flour and start kneading. Add more flour till you have a very soft dough. You might not need to use all the flour.
Take the dough out of the bowl and drizzle the bowl with a bit of oil. Rub the oil all over the dough and place the dough back in the bowl. Cover with a tea towel and let rise in a warm location for about 1 hour.
We usually place our dough in front of the fireplace which makes the dough rise really well.
Knead the dough and divide into 8-12 pieces, depending on how big you want the bread to be.
Let rest for another 30 minutes under the tea towel.
Heat up a regular pan or a grill pan to medium high and brush with a bit of butter.
Flatten each piece of dough and give it that characteristic Naan bread shape, narrow in one end and round in the other, almost like an egg shape.
Place as many pieces as will fit in your pan and let bake for 2-3 minutes. Brush the top with a bit of butter and then flip the breads and bake the other side for 2-3 minutes.
The Naan breads will be a little crispy on the outside and very nice and soft on the inside, so you can easily break off pieces of the bread and scoop up some of that yummy Dhal soup you made previously.
This is the basic recipe for Naan bread, and to spice it up you can knead in different spices, garlic or herbs before the second rising of the dough.
We want to try with either garlic, rosemary, thyme, cumin seeds or sesame seeds.
Let us know how your Naan breads turn out.
-Enjoy!