Naan Bread
Dairy-free/ Egg-free/legume & nut free
I love a good naan bread but I am on a quest to find many recipes that work for the allergies in our home. I find, research, then adapt recipes to make them work. I enjoy taking a basic recipe I understand well and modifying it, sometimes several times, to find a recipe that becomes full proof. I think I am developing quite a repertoire. It is finding the basics and substituting ingredients that would react the same all while using my food science knowledge (or researching) to find out if things will work. Like any good science experiment, always always take copious amounts of notes.
Traditional naan bread has some dairy products in it via milk or a yogurt product. More modern recipes even include eggs but they are not traditional. Naan bread is also traditionally cooked in a tandoor oven but modern-day North America uses a frying pan to cook them.
Below is the result of the Naan I made to go with my adapted chicken curry recipe I made last night.
Ingredients
185 ml warm water
10 ml sugar
15 ml rapid mix yeast
560 ml all-purpose flour
5 ml lemon juice
15 ml olive or avocado oil
Toppings: olive oil and salt
In a large bowel on the counter add warm water, sugar, yeast, lemon juice, and olive oil.
Add 250 ml of flour and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture begins to hold together. At this stage, the mixing helps develop those gluten strands and gives you a structure to the dough.
Continue stirring and gradually stir in 250 ml more flour and turn the dough onto the counter and knead. Knead until the dough is a nice smooth ball.
Place the dough back into the bowl, cover with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size. It took my bread about an hour to double.
You should have approximately 60 ml reserve flour. Use this while you knead on the counter and for when you shape and roll your Naan bread.
Take the risen dough out of the bowl and place it on the floured counter.
Punch it down to a flat piece. Here I like to roll it into a sausage of equal width. I use a bread dough scraper to cut my dough into 8 equal size pieces.
Shape each piece into a round bun
Now flatten the bun on a floured counter
Use a rolling pin to roll into a uniform circle about 20 cm in diameter. It works best to roll from the center outwards continually.
Stack each rolled piece of bread ( looks like mini pizza dough) onto a plate with a sprinkle of flour in between so they don’t stick together.
Naan is not traditionally round but since I am not going for authentic Indian cuisine so I will do it this way.
Preheat a frying pan to medium-high
Brush with a light coat of oil( I prefer to use avocado oil as it is one no one is allergic to and it can withstand a higher temperature than olive oil)
When the pan is preheated add the first piece of bread. Watch it carefully. Brush the top with oil and flip when it begins to bubble and browns lightly. It will begin to puff up a bit. Cooking will take anywhere from 2-4 minutes per side.
When you remove it from the pan brush it lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with a bit of salt. You could add other seasonings as well, garlic is popular.