Bread Atlas · Bread
Tawa Naan
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, char used as punctuation.
Ingredients
- 500 g plain white flour
- 200 g whole milk at 35C (95F)
- 120 g whole milk yoghurt
- 5 g instant dried yeast
- 10 g sugar
- 8 g fine salt
- 30 g ghee, melted
- 40 g ghee, for brushing
- 6 g nigella seeds
- 10 g coriander leaf, chopped
Equipment
Skillet
The skills inside
Tandoor breadsProofing: the rise before the oven
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
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
- Stir the yeast and sugar into the warm milk and stand 10 minutes until it foams, then mix into the flour with the yoghurt, salt and the 30 g ghee to a soft, faintly tacky dough at about 64% hydration. 10 min
- Knead 8-10 minutes until smooth, and until a pinched piece stretches to a translucent sheet before it tears. Prove covered 90 minutes at 26C (79F) until doubled. 10 min
- Divide into 8 pieces of about 110 g, ball them and rest 15 minutes, then roll each into a teardrop 5 mm thick and press in the nigella seeds and coriander. 15 min
- Heat a cast iron tawa over high heat to about 250C (480F): a drop of water should skitter and vanish in two seconds. Wet one face of the naan with your palm and slap it wet side down so it grips the iron.
- Cook 60-90 seconds until the top domes and the big bubbles set, then lift the tawa and invert it over the flame, holding the naan 20-30 seconds until it takes leopard spots. 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 technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes
- Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
- The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
- The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
- Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
- It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.
Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.
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.
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