I baked bread for the first time last weekend! I was pleasantly surprised how well it turned out, enjoyed eating & sharing it, but stil learned a few techniques for next time.
I found the original recipe off of allrecipes.com:
.25 ounce Active Dry Yeast
1 cup Warm Water
1/4 cup White Sugar
3 tablespoons Milk
1 Egg, Beaten
2 Teaspoons Salt
4.5 cups Flour
2 teaspoons Minced Garlic
1/4 cup Butter, or Olive Oil
Bread is a curious creature. I’m of the wrong generation to be termed a Doughboy, but it seems there’s no way to avoid becoming covered in it nonetheless. Accept it, kneading the dough with your hands is the best way to go about making it.
I dissolved the yeast in warm water, let it sit, then added & mixed the sugar, milk, egg, & salt. I slowly added flour until it thickened significantly, ~2.5-3 cups, covered it and let it rise. Be sure to dampen the cloth, dry dough is no fun.
After about an hour, I kneaded in minced garlic, and continued to add flour to keep the dough at a good consistency. All in all, I doubt I used 4.5 cups of flour, but I was concerned about over doing it. Roll dough into small golf-ball sized cubes, cover them with a damp cloth or paper towel and turn on the grill.
I used a panini pan instead of a grill, not ideal, but it worked nicely. The dough cooks far better when covered in olive oil or butter; I used olive oil. I heated the pan to a medium heat, (I needed far less than I originally anticipated.) and grilled the flattened dough about two minutes per side, occasionally brushing olive oil whenever I flipped the loaves.
...and one was Juuuuuuust right!
This is a poor picture, I wish I’d taken more when I’ve become better at the process.
My biggest error was using the panini pan top to flatten out the loaves. While this worked, it compressed the dough more than rolling it out would have. The bread was amazing while warm but became far tougher than I liked by a few hours later. Next time I make naan, smaller loaves, roll the dough flat instead of pressing it, and be conservative with the heat. Hopefully it’ll be fluffier, and more golden brown right from the beginning of the batch.
Best eaten drizzed with honey! I think this is too much work for me to do on a strict basis, but making everything from scratch gives a strange satisfaction!
I’ve never made naan, but for that much yeast / water, for regular bread, you would probably only go with 2-3 cups flour – it seems likely less flour would result in more fluffiness. Enough kneading will make it easy enough to handle without having to keep throwing in flour. The egg must moisten things up a bit but still I feel like less flour may be key…
I kept drizzling the flour to keep the dough from becoming excessively sticky while I was kneading it, which I thought was the idea. It didn’t seem too dry, but it didn’t rise as much as I was expecting either. What consistency should I aim for? I don’t want the dough to stick everywhere it shouldn’t, but if that’s the cost of rising and more fluffiness, then I’ll deal with it.
I hope to give this same recipe, with your advice and less flour, soon and I’ll write how it turns out. Thank you, I appreciate it. I should have asked bread-advice to begin with. Oh, you should really post the recipe & so forth for that rosemary bread you made!