Burmese · Bread
Nan Bya
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, toasted, nutty warmth throughout.
Ingredients
- 500 g plain flour
- 7 g instant yeast
- 10 g salt
- 15 g sugar
- 80 g plain yoghurt
- 230 ml warm water
- 40 ml peanut oil
- 40 g ghee, melted
Equipment
Wok · Rolling pin
The skills inside
Wok techniqueKneading doughProofing: the rise before the oven
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · nuts · peanuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt, add the yoghurt, water and oil, and knead 8 minutes until the dough is slack and tacky yet leaves the bowl wall clean. 8 min
- Prove it covered until doubled and domed, then divide into eight balls of about 110 g and rest them until a pressed dent no longer springs back.
- Heat a heavy iron pan or an upturned wok, dry, until a flick of water skitters and vanishes rather than sitting and steaming.
- Press each ball out to 20 cm with oiled palms, working from the middle outwards and leaving the rim thick; do not reach for a rolling pin.
- Slap it onto the dry pan; when the top domes up in big blisters and the underside is spotted brown, turn it for 40 seconds, brush with ghee and stack under a cloth.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Kneading dough 57 recipes
- The work changed it: what began shaggy and rough is one smooth, cohesive mass, with nothing raggy hanging off it.
- The surface has gone satin and barely tacky, releasing cleanly from hands and board instead of leaving a trail.
- Worked to the point this dough asks for and no further: springy and elastic where structure is wanted, just brought together where tenderness is.
- Torn or cut open, the inside is uniform: no dry streaks, no unmixed pockets, no core of flour that never met the water.
- After its rest it rolls and shapes without snapping back. A dough that fights the pin needed more rest, not more force.
Where it goes wrong Sticking was fought with flour instead of technique or patience, stroke after stroke, until the dough had taken in far more than the formula asked; it turns tight and dry under the hands, and bakes dense however well everything else goes.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.