Whole Wheat Naan

This is a soft, thick naan that will go with just about any meal. I paired this flatbread with my quinoa & three bean croquettes. Serve naan warm, with a yogurt and cumin sauce or as it is fresh from the oven. I've worked with various naan recipes before but this one, of my own variation, is by far, as my boyfriend Matt said, the best one I've made to date.  Enjoy.

Whole Wheat Naan
4 large pieces, 15" long

2 tsp dried yeast
1/4 cup warm water (from the tap)
1 cup lowfat 1% organic plain yogurt
1 cup boiling water
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour (plus more for dusting)
2 T wildflower honey
2 tsp salt
2 scallions, chopped
1 1/2 cloves of garlic, minced

Equipment: 2 mixing bowls, rolling pin, pizza/baking stone, parchment paper

Pour the warm water into a medium mixing bowl. Sprinkle the dried yeast on top and stir to dissolve.  In the smaller mixing bowl place the yogurt in the bowl and pour the boiling water on top. Use a flat spatula and stir. Let the temperature reduce to about room temperature, a little less than 5 minutes.

Pour the yeast mixture into the yogurt mixture and stir together. Add 3 cups of whole wheat pastry flour 1/2 cup at a time. Use a spatula or a wooden spoon to stir batter. Stir in the same direction for about 2 minutes. If you have happy yeast your sponge will be nice and bubbly after 5 minutes and more so after 30 minutes. Let sit in its sponge state for about 30 minutes, covered with a plastic lid or plastic wrap.

After 30 minutes, uncover and pour salt and honey onto the sponge and stir in as much of the whole wheat and all purpose flours, 1/4 to 1/2 cup at a time. Add scallions and garlic to the dough at this point. The dough should begin to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Turn out onto a kneading surface. Clean your mixing bowl and spray with a non stick cooking spray. Knead your dough with floured hands for about 10 minutes. Place back into the mixing bowl, cover, and let it rise for 1 hour.

About 20 minutes before baking time, preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Place a pizza or baker's stone into the oven. When the dough has risen, divide it into 4 pieces. Take one piece at a time with floured hands and with a floured rolling pin roll out onto a flour dusted sheet of parchment paper into a free form shape about 1/4" thick. Set each piece off to the side and let each rest for 10 minutes. Right before baking, make dimple like indentations with your fingers onto the dough. Place one sheet of naan into the oven at a time and bake for about 10 minutes or until slightly golden. Remove and cool. Serve slightly warm. 

As I've written about before, I'm quite pleased with the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day book. Their most recent book is Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day. It's already on my Amazon.com culinary wishlist and I'm looking forward to baking through that text as much as I have with their first book.

Their olive bread is wonderful for those that enjoy olives as much as I do. I typically avoid them because of their high calorie/high fat content, but they are a delightful treat. Here they are prominently featured in a soft olive oil bread with a crispy cornmeal crust.  I've baked 4 loaves of Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe François's olive bread with a variety of olives from Wegman's olive bar.  I chose my favorite pitted olives at Wegman's olive bar from kalamata olives to green olives with pimentos and olives stuffed with garlic. One small half quart container at Wegmans filled full of mixed olives will be enough for 4 loaves of bread (plus some snacking). The original recipe calls for 1/4 cup of olives for one loaf but my 1/4 cup is a very generous one. The salty olive flavors will permeate through the dough so you'll have to love olives to enjoy these loaves of bread.

I've used King Arthur Unbleached All Purpose Flour, a standard olive oil, sucanat, (unrefined cane sugar), and a mixed array of olives from Wegman's olive bar to create the loaves pictured and followed their recipe for olive bread with an olive dough. Cornmeal is a nice addition to the bottom of the loaf.

If you have yet to read or borrow Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day from the local library or bookstore, I would encourage you, especially if you don't have a lot of time to devote to baking to try a loaf or two.  You can mix the dough in one container, let it sit on the counter for 2 hours, place the container in the fridge, cut off what you need for their recipe the follow day or next couple of days, shape and bake. No kneading is needed, and it doesn't make as much mess on the counter.  My boyfriend can vouch for that one. Enjoy!

After popular demand, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë Francois, the authors of Artisan Bread in 5 Mins a Day, created a variation on their white flour dough recipe to make German rolls, Brötchen. You can find their master recipe and their variation for Brötchen on their website.

I thought I'd try their Brötchen recipe to see how well it matched up to the delicious rolls I enjoyed for breakfast *almost* everyday in Germany. (I'll admit my staple was Müsli with soy milk). They came pretty close to the white rolls we had at the Zum ewigen Rath pension we stayed at in Mühlhausen, but King Arthur's Flour is not made with the same wheat flour as used by German bakers. 

Hertzberg and Francois' variation on their dough recipe for Brötchen includes keeping the liquid ratio the same when mixing the dough, but adding three egg whites to the warm water. I placed three egg whites into my measuring cup and added water until the level rose to 3 cups, and followed the rest of the dough recipe. The best part: there's no kneading required and everything is mixed in the same bowl.  I let it rise in the covered bowl on the kitchen table while I watched a movie and after, I placed the bowl in the refrigerator. This morning I cut off what I needed from the refrigerated dough, and shaped 6 rolls. Shaping took less than 5 minutes, and as the rolls rested for about a half hour on my prepared baking sheet, I preheated the oven to 425degrees. I brushed the rolls with egg white and made a small cut in the top of the roll with a serrated knife.  I filled a small Pyrex baking dish with hot water and set it on the bottom shelf before I set my baking sheet in the oven. As you've probably read from other bakers, you need steam to make a nice crust.  The rolls were baked for about 25 minutes. I rotated them halfway through.  

I had nice, warm crusty rolls before Matt was ready to run out the door this morning.  I have left over dough in the refrigerator and if I continue to work through the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day book we'll be enjoying freshly baked bread all week. 

Their recipe for German style rolls can be found here. I followed it as directed.

Alexanderplatz is the area surrounding the East German TV tower, the Neptune fountain, the world clock (Weltzeituhr) and the S and U Bahn stations. The platz is a large area where many festivals and crowds gather throughout the year. 

Saturday, September 12th, Matt and I joined the Beneke family (Uwe, his wife Susanna, and their children Rosa and Jan) for a stroll around the city of Berlin. Right out of the Alexanderplatz station we encountered a bread festival, Brotfest. Brotfest is an annual festival in the Alexanderplatz. There were so many stands and people in Alex that the world clock could not be seen.

Germany is the land of fresh bread. How fortunate that we were able to walk through a free, public festival in Alex, where local bakers gathered together to showcase their best loaves of sourdough, Bretzels (pretzels), kuchen, kakes, and Brötchen. Brotfest featured free samples, contests, (the award were pretzels), and activities for children. It was a sensory delight, with wafting smells of dough, and the taste of fresh, dense bread, pastries, and cakes.   

The Beneke's neighborhood baker had a small stand, and the Uwe and Susanna bought two small rolls for Jan and Rosa to eat. Rosa's roll was a dense thick, whole wheat bread with seeds, and carrots. We wandered through the festival, took a few pictures, and sampled cheesecake and small cubes of bread.