Hi, I’m Edward and we’re here at Sur La Table Cooking School in Arlington, Virginia. And today, we’re making Naan bread.
Right now, we’re going to shape and bake our Naan bread. So, our dough has been rising for about four hours and it has definitely doubled in volume. So now, we need to punch our dough down and we’re going to very briefly knead it again for just about a minute, and we can do that right on our bowl. As you can see, after it’s risen, it’s not as sticky as it was when we were forming the dough. It’s much more easy to handle now.
So now, we’re going to take this dough and we’re going to break it down into eight pieces, and we will use our scraper for that. So, we’re going to take these and roll them into little balls and place them on either a non-stick baking tray or a baking tray that has been lightly oiled, and we’ll cover them with plastic wrap and we’ll work with one ball at a time.
So, we’ve place eight balls of Naan dough under plastic wrap on a tray. And now, we’re going to shape one. So, you’ll take a ball of dough and you’ll have some extra flour for dusting and you will flour your surface. Our baking stone is in the oven on the upper middle rack and it’s been pre-heating for at least 30 minutes at 550 degrees or the highest temperature that you can get your oven. So we’re going to take our ball dough with a rolling pin and we’re going to roll it out into a 6-7 inch circle dusting with flour as needed. Your rolling pin may need a little bit of flour as well.
And just gently rolling it out, if the dough is very springy and keeps sort of springing back, you can just stop and let it rest right on the work surface for a minute or two and that should help it relax a little bit and make the rolling out easier. Once we’ve got the rolling going, we do not want to turn the bread over because we don’t want to create a floured surface on the top and the bottom at the same time. That looks good.
So, once we’ve got it rolled out, we have our wooden peel right here, and we’re going to dust our peel with a little bit of flour so the bread does not stick to it and we’ll transfer our dough round right onto the peel. From this point, I’m very happy with just a round-shaped Naan but we’re going to make the traditional teardrop shaped.
We’ll take our round of dough and we’re going to stretch it out to pick it up from the back and pull as you go stretching it out into about a 12-inch long tear drop shape. If it tears a little bit, that’s perfectly fine. Now, we’re going to brush a little bit of melted butter on the top of the dough and then we’re going to sprinkle with some of our nigella seeds or the Kalonji seeds, a little bit over the top. You could also use cumin seeds here or perhaps sesame seeds as well.
We’re going to press lightly on the seeds to help them adhere to the bread. Now, we’re going to take our dough on the peel to the oven and slide it on to the baking stone. You want to take your peel and shake it back and forth a bit to make sure that the bread is not stuck to the peel. And then, carefully take the peel to the stone and you can jerk it back a little bit and once the tip gets on the stone, you can just pull it right out. And we’re going to bake that for about 3 to 4 minutes until it’s puffing up and getting a little bit golden brown spots on top.
Our Naan bread is ready to come out of the oven, only 3 or 4 minutes. It comes out really nice, crisp spots and it’s also very soft on the inside, and I love to brush it with a little bit of melted butter when it comes out. You can store these. Keep them warm in a cloth-lined bread basket until you’ve got them all baked. You know, you can also do this on a baking tray if you don’t have a baking stone and a wooden peel. You would just arrange the breads on oil baking sheets and bake them in the center of the oven until they puff up and get a little brown. So, it’s about the same cooking time.
Naan is great even all by itself, but of course it’s a natural with dishes tandoori chicken or buttered chicken. Enjoy it.
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