The Chronicles of Naania.....

Normally here at the Spicery (we are ashamed to say) we get our Indian breads courtesy of Sharwoods or Lloyd Grossman. But not anymore.....naan of that shop bought stuff here after this week's success story! I don't really know why we haven't had a bash at it before - we thought it would be a bit time consuming and involve lots of kneading and proving. Turns out it's fairly easy peasy. So here is our preliminary recipe and now we have the basics we're going to come up with many many flavours and probably eat them every day.

Basic Naan Bread 300g of self raising flour (or use plain flour with 1 tsp of baking powder) 1 sachet of dried active yeast 2 tsp sugar 1 heaped tsp of salt 125ml of milk 100g full fat natural yogurt 2 tbsp of oil plus extra for greasing a bowl Method:

1. Warm the milk to a hand hot temperature then stir in the sugar and yeast and allow to stand for 10 minutes until it begins to froth and the yeast has dissolved
2. Place all the flour, salt, yogurt and 2 tbsp of oil in a bowl *(plus any flavouring you like) then stir in the milk/yeast mixture
3. Mix until you have a soft but not sticky dough (add a splash of water if the dough seems too dry or a bit of flour if it's too wet)
4. Knead the dough on a floured surface for a couple of minutes until fairly smooth then place in an oiled bowl and cover with cling film
5. Allow to rest for at least 15 minutes
6. Heat a large frying pan (without any oil) until nice and hot (use a non stick pan if you've got one)
7. Divide the dough into 4 pieces, then on a floured surface squish one of the pieces out to a tear drop shape roughly 5mm thick and 20cm at it's longest point (or you can roll them out but having some bits of the dough thicker than others seems to encourage them to puff up)
8. Dry fry the naan bread for a couple of minutes on each side until it puffs up and chars slightly in places on the outside (they should look a little something like this)
9. Wrap in foil then repeat with the remaining pieces of dough (you could keep them warm in the oven for 20 minutes or so)
10. Serve them warm, spread with a bit of butter to accompany favourite curry

* so far we've tried the traditional nigella seed and a turmeric, fresh garlic and green chilli variety. Next on the list (although I'm pretty anti it) peshwari and then keema. And next week we're going to have a brunch of Indian scrambled eggs (onion, garlic, green chilli and curry powder) with some spinach and paneer naan. Any particular type you want to see then give us a holler...