Thursday, February 9, 2017

Amazing Garlic Naan!

Welcome to another edition of "Ginny's Terrifying Adventures in the Kitchen"! Last week it was aluminum-wrapped copy paper in the oven to make bread cones. This week it's flatbread being cooked directly on the flame of my gas stove. Oh my......! This is what I get when I "breeze" through recipes, looking at the pretty pictures and ignoring some of the more questionable instructions -haha! 

This was a totally last-minute creation. I had already decided that I was NOT going to make any bread for the big game - there was enough food coming and I had selected four simple things I was going to make. Well, you probably know how this goes.......you get to working in the kitchen and things are going smoothly......you decide, "Hmmmm, I could also add -----; It's not that difficult!" Well, that was me on Sunday - Hmmmmm, wouldn't fresh hummus be tasty with these cut-up veggies? - so I made hummus. Hmmmmmm, wouldn't some fresh naan also be tasty with the hummus? - so I dug up the recipe for naan that I had wanted to try (but hadn't read thoroughly) and mixed up the dough. My comfort level dramatically changed when the dough had risen and I read the REST of the recipe.......WHAT!!!!! Place the dough directly on the flame!!!!! OKkkkkkkk........ so the adventure began! What started in great fear ended in great delight.....I LOVED the texture - my past experiments with naan had never yielded any close to a restaurant-quality product. And oh, the taste - the charred spots added that "just-like-at-the-restaurant" taste, along with all the garlic. Again, as I did last week, I advise great care as you proceed on this adventure. No doing two things at one time!! Do THIS! And then thoroughly enjoy it! 

Garlic Naan

Dough:
1 Tbsp/Packet Red Star Platinum Yeast (you can use slightly less –  1 ½-2 tsp)
½ Cup warm water
1 Cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
¾ Cup whole wheat or white whole wheat flour
1 ½ Tbsp. vegetable oil
¼ Cup milk, warmed
1 tsp. sugar
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. grated garlic (1 clove peeled garlic, using a fine grate microplane)

Topping:
2 Tbsp. salted butter
1 clove garlic, minced
Fresh or dried cilantro, if desired

Place warm water and yeast in EZ DOH bucket and stir to dissolve yeast. Let rest 1 minute. Add one cup of flour, then additional dough ingredients. EZ DOH-it for 2-3 minutes, or until dough is smooth and soft and all ingredients are incorporated. Dough may be slightly sticky – you may add additional flour, but not so much to remove all stickiness – it should be somewhere in between sticky and smooth).  Remove dough from bucket, spray bucket with cooking spray, “smooth” dough and replace in bucket. Cover and let rise until doubled.

For the topping melt the butter and stir in the minced garlic. Set aside.  Lightly oil a 10” or 12” cast iron skillet and heat on gas stove (There are oven instructions, but I don’t think it would be as effective and I haven’t tried it that way, so I’m not including them. ). Divide the dough into 4-5 pieces. On a floured surface, roll each piece into a 8-12” circle. Place one circle of dough onto the hot skillet. Cook for 1-2 minutes, until the top of the bread starts to show bubbles all over the surface. Using tongs, flip the naan and place it directly on the gas flame (on the stove grate) until the surface is slightly, delightfully charred (10-20 seconds). With the tongs, remove the naan, place it on the counter and repeat with all of the dough. Immediately brush the cooked naan with the garlic butter. Sprinkle with cilantro if desired.
 ENJOY while warm (though they’re good even when they’re cooled down!)



Recipe adapted from chefdehome.com



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