mary.codes

I love to eat tikka masala or butter chicken with a piece of naan bread. Usually I just use store-bought naan, but in this case, I didn't have any. I was able to adapt this recipe from King Arthur Baking, and the naan bread turned out soft and perfect. It's also a fast recipe, with only an hour and a half total rise time, and a few minutes of baking on the griddle.

Ingredients

• 180g of all-purpose flour
• 90g of bread flour
• 140g of warm water
• 70g Greek yogurt (about 1/2 a single-serve package) (edit 12/29: an equivalent amount of sour cream works, too)
• 10g honey
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt

I put the bowl of my stand mixer on the kitchen scale. This recipe is nice because you can just dump everything into the bowl and weigh it in place. I start with the dry ingredients, measuring out both types of flour, yeast, and salt. Then I add the water, Greek yogurt, honey, and melted butter.

The stand mixer gets the dough attachment added, then I put the bowl on the mixer. Mix on "stir" for a minute or so, until the mixture begins to create a shaggy dough. Then, increase the speed to 2. The dough should start out shaggy, then get sticky, and then start to form a ball and pull away from the sides of the bowl. I left the mixer on 2 speed for about 7 minutes, which allowed the gluten to begin forming and gives the dough some stretch.

When the dough is smooth and springy, transfer to an oiled bowl and cover with a kitchen towel for an hour. In the hour, the dough should double in size.

Once the dough is risen, don't punch it down! Transfer to a work surface and cut it into 8 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and set aside. I put a silicone mat on the countertop so the dough balls will be undisturbed. Cover the dough balls with the kitchen towel and let them rise for at least another 20 minutes. Since I was busy cooking other things, they rested for about 30 minutes, which was totally fine.

When ready to bake the naan, heat up the electric griddle to 400. Make sure that it's completely heated up before adding the naan. Like pancakes, the first one might not turn out great, especially if the griddle isn't hot enough. Take a dough ball and either roll it out or stretch it by hand. I stretched it by hand and it worked wonderfully. You want to get it thin, but not so thin that you get holes in the dough. Then, place the stretched dough circle on the griddle. It takes about a minute to cook the first side, then flip it and cook the underside for about a minute. The dough should puff and get nice brown spots where it touches the griddle. Remove and serve.