Not all of us are lucky enough to have access to a tandoor oven, so a good old barbecue will have to do the trick today. If you DO have access to a tandoor oven, we are very jealous and spiteful and don’t particularly feel like dealing with you and your “fancy tandoor oven” because you’re “better than us” and prefer to have “authentically” cooked naan bread.
Grilled Naan Bread Recipe
Makes 10-12 small naan
Ingredients
¼ cup milk
¾ cup water
¼ teaspoon instant (fast-rising) yeast
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
Scant ¾ cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 large egg
¼ cup 2% (or full-fat) Greek yogurt
Butter, to finish (make sure it’s salted. This isn’t amateur hour.)
Instructions
Step 1: Assemble your ingredients.
Step 2: Pour the milk and water in a small saucepan over medium heat, and cook until it’s warm. Don’t overheat that stuff, you don’t want a hot mix of watery milk, you want a somewhat warm mix of watery milk.
Step 3: Mix the yeast, flours, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda in a giant bowl (or a large bowl. That’ll work too) attached to a mixer with a paddle attachment. Mix it up, just so you don’t have chunks of baking soda all over the place. Gross.
Step 4: Place the egg and yogurt in a small bowl and whisk just until combined.
Step 5: Stir the milky watery (mmm… sounds delicious, no?) mixture into the egg and yogurt.
Step 6: With the mixer on low speed, pour the milky watery eggy gross-smelling liquid into the dry ingredients. When it’s mixed up pretty good, but there are still dry bits, switch from the paddle attachment to the dough hook. Continue to mix on low speed until you have a nice, soft, ball of dough. If it’s too sticky to form a ball, add a bit more flour, one teaspoon at a time, until it takes form. If it flat-out refuses to become a ball because it’s rebelling against you, give it a stern talking-to, and then continue to add flour until it does form a ball. Show that dough who’s boss.
Step 7: When the dough has conceded, put it in a big, oiled bowl, and then toss it around a bit so the dough is covered in oil. Ohhhhhh yeahhhhhh…. Cover it with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free spot for about 3 hours, or until doubled in size.
Step 8: After the dough is done with its rising and resting and whatnot, punch it down. Cruel, we know. Preheat the grill to medium-high heat.
Step 9: Now, roll the dough into little balls. Somewhere between the size of a baseball and a golf ball. This should make 10-12 balls, so if you’re not going to eat 10-12 pieces of naan, maybe wrap the leftover balls up in a couple layers of plastic wrap and throw them in the freezer.
Step 10: Stretch the dough out with your hands (or with a rolling pin, if you’re not feeling very ambitious), until it’s as thin as you can get it, without it tearing. You also want some parts to be a little thicker, so you get that nice chewy texture, so don’t worry about making each one perfect. Place them between sheets of oiled parchment paper.
Step 11: Put the rolled out dough on the grill, about four at a time, and let them cook for a few minutes.
Step 12: When they start to bubble up, flip ‘em over. Ooh. Look at those grill marks.
Step 13: When they’re all cooked, they’ll be nice and golden brown, and darker brown in some spots. Take them off the grill and brush them with some melted butter.
Step 14: Mmm… naan.
