Week three of the Great British Bake Off is a season stalwart: Bread Week. Bread week has taken place on the third week of the competition since the 5th series of GBBO aired in 2014. Despite the switch to Channel 4, bread week’s tie to week three has held firm and we think it’s embedded as tradition at this point! This year, Bread Week saw the bakers tackle Chelsea Buns, a Korovai showstopper, and of course, the traditional technical. Set by King of Bread, Paul Hollywood, the 2018 bread week technical has a new twist: homemade naan bread. So, we turned to our very own in-house Indian food expert, Shobha, to get her top tips on baking authentic homemade naan bread. Move over Paul, there’s a new Queen of the Naan in town!
How to make Shobha’s authentic homemade naan bread for 84p per bread
Image courtesy of Snapguide
Serves 10-12, £0.84 per serving
What you’ll need
380 grams of plain flour (the equivalent of 3 cups), plus extra for dusting
2 teaspoons of garlic paste
2-3 tablespoons of butter (for an even more authentic taste you can use Ghee, but this is expensive!), plus an extra tablespoon, melted
A pinch of salt
A 7g sachet of dried yeast
2 teaspoons of sugar
1-2 teaspoons of vegetable oil
1 teaspoon of Nigella seeds
1-2 tablespoons of crushed fresh garlic
A handful of finely chopped coriander leaves
How to make it
In a cup, mix together the yeast and sugar with warm water, and cover with a tea towel or cling film. Set to one side for 10 minutes for the yeast to activate – when you come back to it, it should look foamy
While you wait for the yeast, mix together the garlic paste, 2-3 tablespoons of butter or Ghee and the pinch of salt to make a salted garlic butter
Weigh out the flour into a large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. When the yeast is ready, pour it into the flour bit at a time and start kneading the dough. If you need to add extra water, add a little at a time until all of the flour and yeast is incorporated into the dough. Knead in the salted garlic butter you made earlier.
When the mixture has come together into one ball of dough, you can turn it out onto a floured worktop and carry on kneading. You’ll know it’s ready because you’ll have a shiny dough with a slightly sticky texture. Now, you need to leave it to rest. Cover it with a damp, clean cloth, and take a break for 35-40 minutes.
When you come back to the dough, you’ll need to punch the air out of it (which is very therapeutic!) and knead the dough again for a few minutes. Divide the dough into 10-12 balls, depending on how big or small you want your homemade naan bread to be – and how willing you are to share!
Take each ball at a time, and stretch it by hand until it’s roughly 2-3mm thick. It can be thicker if you like, but it will take longer to cook.
Image courtesy of Clever Housewife
How to cook #1: In the oven
When it comes to cooking your homemade naan bread, the easiest way by far is in the oven. Heat your oven to 220 degrees (gas mark 7), and bake each naan bread one at a time for 5 minutes. Once they’re all cooked, switch your oven over to its grill setting, and place each naan under the grill, as close to the heat as you can without it touching. Leave it there for a minute, and when you take it out it’ll have those lovely grill-pan marks you find on a good naan!
How to cook #2: On the hob
Or, if you have a gas hob and a flat griddle pan (also known as a tawa), you can use Shobha’s authentic, flame-baked method! This requires a lot of skill and comes with a risk of losing some of your portions of naan, but will be a lot of fun and deliver a truly Indian bread at the end of it. If you fancy that, here are instructions on how to (hopefully) nail it first time:
Heat up your griddle pan on a high heat. Take your stretched, ready to bake naan in one hand, and with the other, splash a drop of water onto the top.
Place the wet side on the griddle and leave it there for 30-40 seconds until it sticks. Then, pick up the griddle pan and flip it over, so that the naan cooks on the open gas flame of your hob. Cook it for 2 minutes to achieve a charred effect, then flip the griddle back over and leave the naan for a further minute to make sure it’s cooked through. Repeat this process with each naan.
Serving up
In a small bowl, mix together the melted butter you should have left from earlier, the nigella seeds and the crushed garlic. Using a pastry brush, brush the mixture across each of your cooked naans and sprinkle with chopped coriander leaves. Serve alongside a delicious curry or dahl for an authentic Indian fakeaway treat!
Got the baking bug? Find out how to make your own homemade wagon wheel biscuits with our recipe!
