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The dough ingredients promise little in terms of flavor: flour, salt, sugar, milk, water and baking powder. But slapped into a blistering hot oven, that dough transforms into a round of bubbly, roasty toastiness called naan.
Tuck some spicy potatoes inside or top it with a bit of garlic and it's a meal-in-the-hand, the kind of food that some consider mandatory at every meal.
"In the south of India, people eat rice with their curries," says Kulbir Pabla of Taste of India restaurant in Fremont. "But we are from the north, so for us, a meal is not complete without naan." For that reason, the Pabla family has perfected the art of making what many say is the best naan in the Bay Area — tender, fluffy, toasty and always ultra-fresh, because they cook it all day long. At Taste of India in Fremont, Mohinder Pabla and his brother Davinder oversee the making of 30 to 50 pounds of naan every day — that's 900 to 1,500 pieces of naan.
Making naan well, says Davinder, is one of the reasons Taste of India has been able to grow from a small restaurant 20 years ago to a thriving catering business that serves people as far north as Santa Rosa, as far south as Monterey.
"This is a recipe that we have been making the same for 70 years," Davinder says. "It came from my father, so of course we have never written it down." Recipes for naan differ quite a bit, he admits. Some include eggs, many call for yeast
"Good naan shouldn't be spongy or rubbery. Good naan is thin and bubbly. It's tender and toasty," he says.
Besides the right balance of good ingredients, good naan requires good technique and a really hot cooking surface, preferably a clay tandoor.
As his brother Mohinder — the family's naan expert — measures each ingredient into a giant mixer to show how simple it is to make naan, Davinder and Mohinder's son Kulbir spill a few of their naan-making secrets.
First, they say, it's important to put all of the dry ingredients in the bowl and have your oil handy before you even turn on the mixer. When you are ready, add all of the milk and water at once and mix the dough just until it comes together.
"You mix it well. That's all," Davinder says. The oil is added later because its primary purpose is to make the dough less sticky. "Without the oil, this is what you get," he says, picking up a piece of super-sticky stray dough in his fingers.
After the dough is mixed and formed into very smooth balls, it is essential to allow the dough to rest. "The dough changes in texture. You can see the difference in the surface of the dough. It becomes smooth." Technically speaking, resting allows the gluten strands in the dough to form, which in turn allows the dough to stretch enough to make a thin, bubbly naan.
The most demanding part of making naan — whether you own a tandoor oven or not — is cooking the bread. Those who have tandoors are well aware of the hazards of reaching deep into the bowl-shaped tandoor to place a piece of dough.
"My father has made so much naan that if you look at his forearms, you'll see he doesn't have any hair on them at all. He singed it all off so many times that it doesn't grow back," Kulbir says.
To make the job of slapping the rounds of dough onto the sides of the tandoor easier and a bit safer, the restaurant works with a pillow that they wrap with a clean terry-cloth towel. Each piece of bread is positioned on the pillow before placing in the oven.
Trying it at home
Since most of us don't have a tandoor, it made sense to take the Pablas' recipe home with me to give it a quick test run, using the stove and the oven to see which would produce the best results. Two hours into the task left me with an empty flour bin and a pile of thick, rubbery discs.
I made a quick run to the store for some overpriced flour and got back to work, tweaking the recipe slightly, then baking the dough on a pizza stone with the oven turned to convection. The result was a naan that most people would praise, but not the same light, airy, smoky naan that the Pablas make in their big tandoor. I needed to try again.
A fourth batch was also problematic, because I had stretched the dough so thin that it baked to a crisp. A fifth batch cooked on the stove top was promising, but failed to bubble.
Success came with the sixth batch of naan dough, which I cooked on a thick pizza stone, then broiled to brown the top.
Although it was done in two steps, baking on the stone, then broiling was an acceptable substitute for the tandoor.
When I asked Davinder how I should store the naan that I make at home, he gave me a look of disbelief. "You don't store naan. You eat it."
Reach Jolene Thym at 510-353-7008 or jthym@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Bea Ahbeck/Staff
NAAN BAKES BEST at extreme temperatures, as Mohinder Pabla does in his tandoor. Try replicating the conditions at home with a grill and a terra cotta pot.
