Bread Baking Babes: Naan

In the course of time we Babes found that we share more than "just" the love for bread, the love for spices and savoury dishes is another one. Take that and pair it with bread?

You'll have the Cookiebaker thinking out of her -cookie- box and come up with a great challenge: Bake Naan. And then Lynn warns us: every recipe starts with "naan really can't be made at home because traditional naan is made in a special super hot brick oven".

Is that so? We're the Bread Baking Babes...so we try!

The recipe comes from Paul Hollywood's 100 Great Breads (someone I encountered before and still don't own his book ...aaah! poor me!). Ingredients down below, I send you to Lynn for the directions and how to become a Bread Baking Buddy!

Curried Naan Bread
- makes 6 naan

scant 4 cups white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra for frying
2 Tbsp mild curry powder
1/2 oz / 15 g. package compressed fresh yeast*
1-1/4 cups water
generous 1/2 cup golden raisins
3 Tbsp mango chutney
* If you are using instant or dry yeast, reduce the quantities a little

Plain Naan
- makes 3 naan (which made Lynn wonder -same amount of flour as above, so why half the yield?)

scant 4 cups white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
1-1/2 tsp salt
1/2 oz / 15 g. package compressed fresh yeast*
water to mix
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp caraway seeds
olive oil for frying

~~~~~~~~~~

Stupid me didn't use a skillet (it was right there in the directions...) but thought of a clever way by finding a shortcut. Use my plug-in table grill/skillet/thingy and bake 5 at a time. Not clever. It doesn't get hot enough and it took quite a while to get the lovely blisters. Still it made us a lovely dinner. I combined the curried and the plain Naan recipe; using curry in the dough plus caraway seeds and cumin. Not using mango chutney and raisins because I was afraid that our pickiest eater would refrain from them. I know the DH and me would have loved some raisins and chutney in them. Next time!

I paired our Naan's with a cucumber raita, a spinach paneer, Balti chicken and Tandoori chicken, and a vegetable curry, oh and the Indian version of onion rings! Leave it to me to complicate what could have been a relatively effortless dinner....

Pictures aren't the best quality; dinner was very late, we were hungry and the lighting was great for atmosphere not so for picture taking. No left overs to do a photo shoot the other day, which obviously is a good thing. Dinner was enjoyed by all in a lively manner. Eating with your hands does that. Recipes for the rest of the dinner will follow shortly! Great challenge Lynn, thanks for making me try this type of bread again!