Hello everyone, I am new to this board and this is my first post.
I lately have been cooking many types of Indian food, and I finally decided to challenge myself with making Naan bread from scratch.
I had several issues, and was hoping some of the experts on this board could give some advice.
I don't have the recipe in front of me, but I have some general questions. It was a 'simple naan bread' recipe with no spices (no cumin, etc.) to speak of, just the basics.
1) The recipe said to mix salt, sugar, baking soda, and warm water with a bit of yeast and wait 10 minutes for it to froth(?). I did that and it didn't really froth much, which may have been the cause of some of my later problems. I used Fleischmann's Active yeast, freshly bought the same day from the grocery store.
2) When I made the dough it said to leave it sit for ~1 hour in a bowl with a wet towel on top, until the dough rises about 2x. I waited 2 hours and it didn't appear to rise much. It was sitting in my semi-warm kitchen, should I have put it in a warmer place and if so where?
3) Shaping the bread was very difficult since it stuck to everything. I put flour on my hands, rolling pin, and counter, but still it stuck like crazy. I ended up making something vaguely bread-like but I think it was a bit too thick.
4) The resultant bread tasted more like cookies and was a bit crunchy.
Any ideas what could have went wrong? I think most of the issue was with the Yeast, but not sure what I should have done differently. I'm not sure if the stickyness was related or not.
I'm looking forward to trying a second time but I need to study up on this stuff first (:
Thanks!
Edited by locksleyu - 8/10/12 at 5:51am
