Food Lab 47: Indian Breads

Your Food Labbers enjoyed a fantastic first pod/bubble meal together on Thanksgiving (cream of chestnut soup, Brussels sprouts salad with warm bacon hazelnut dressing, turkey with wild rice stuffing and gravy, Chef Spouse's decadent mashed potatoes, cranberry chutney, steamed green beans, sour cream dinner rolls, FOUR kinds of pie), and then gathered this past weekend for OUR FIRST FOOD LAB SINCE 2019.

Chef Spouse and I have been enjoying a fair amount of Indian cuisine during the pandemic, both due to cooking our way through the several Madhur Jaffrey cookbooks we have and due to the many excellent Indian carry out places walking distance from our house (one of which makes vindaloo so I hot I can't eat it all in one go - and that's saying something - and the other offering so many delicious vegetarian options, ordering without ordering WAY TOO MUCH is nearly impossible). And when we get take away, we always get bread - naan, roti, stuffed paratha - but when we cook at home? Not so much.

Well, that just cannot stand any longer.

We decided to tackle the three classics: roti, paratha, and naan. 

Roti and paratha are both unleavened breads that start with the same base - flour, water, a little salt (very similar to tortillas). The difference comes from the cooking method.

Naan is a leavened bread that generally also includes some animal fat/protein.

Seeing as the naan was going to have to rise, we started there. I had found various recipes that included egg, milk, or yogurt. However, Madhur Jaffrey's naan recipe included ALL THREE. Winner. 

Kneading the naan

The first challenge I ran into is that the dough was pretty dry. Jaffrey says to knead for ~10 minutes until smooth & satiny. I added about 1/4 c. additional milk as I went, but my dough never got "smooth & satiny" and by ten minutes in, it was developing a pretty firm gluten structure, so I figured I better stop and set it to rise and see what happened.

In the meantime, I moved onto mixing up my roti/paratha dough. Couldn't be more simple: two parts flour to one part water. Jaffrey did NOT have you include any salt, which we all felt might be a mistake (we were correct). 

Ah, but WHAT KIND of flour? 

Traditionally, folks use atta flour. We did not have atta flour, but the thing that makes it unique is that it has a high gluten content. King Arthur to the rescue! We decided to lab regular King Arthur whole wheat against King Arthur whole wheat pastry flour. Pasty flour, of course, is *pastry* flour because it has less gluten, so it stays soft and flaky rather than forming a firm structure. Yes, that's sort of counter to what you're ostensibly looking for in trying to make an unleavened bread, but we figured it would be an interesting test.

Anyway, you mix it up, knead it a bit, and then then it sit, covered with a damp towel, for ~30 minutes.

Roti/paratha dough in process

While that was resting, it was time to get ready to cook the naan. It's cooked a lot like pizza - set your rack about 6 inches from your broiler, pop your stones onto it, and then heat them as hot as your oven will go for a good 45+ minutes before baking.

Meanwhile, even though it never got smooth & satiny, the naan had doubled in size, so it was time to portion it, roll it out, and bake it. Three minutes on your HOT-HOT-HOT stones in your HOT-HOT-HOT oven so it puffs up, then turn on the broiler for ~30 seconds to brown it on top.

Patting out the naan dough

Portioning the naan dough

Rolling out the naan dough

Into the oven

Out of the oven

Easy-peasy, and it was DELICIOUS. It also held up the best the next day.

So why didn't the dough ever get "smooth & satiny"? I have a theory: Jaffrey calls for yogurt. I used the yogurt I normally have around - plain, whole milk Greek yogurt. Did you spot the problem? Greek yogurt is just regular yogurt....that's been strained again TO REMOVE EXTRA LIQUID. That straining that makes it so delightfully thick and creamy? Yeah, I think I maybe needed some of that to give the dough the right consistency. Next time, I'll start with more like 1 c. of milk to compensate, because once I was at the kneading stage, I was anxious about trying to add too much milk because I was afraid it wouldn't incorporate properly.

Onto roti and paratha! 

As I mentioned, the base is the same - the difference comes from how you cook it. 

Roti is just portioned out, rolled out, cooked on a hot comal or cast iron skillet, and then finished directly on the flame (gas stove or grill) to make it puff up. 

Roti puff from the whole wheat pastry flour

Roti puff from the plain whole wheat flour - now THAT's a puff!

Everyone else preferred the flavor of the pastry flour, but I like the regular whole wheat best - it was deliciously nutty, and you can't argue with that puff. Sadly, neither really held up the next day - the leftovers got fairly tough. Then again, it mixes up so fast and you can store the mixed up dough in the fridge (no worries about it over-rising because no leavening), so just cook what you're planning to eat right then. 

Paratha, on the other hand, is laminated first. Yes, like croissants. Only for paratha, you use ghee rather than cold (or even frozen) sheets of butter.

We found two methods of laminating. Jaffrey's was quite simple - roll out a disk, laminate with ghee, fold in half, laminate again, fold in half again (to give you a quarter), roll *lightly* one final time.

First lamination

Folding the dough

Second lamination

Folding the dough again and dusting with flour to roll out

Rolling out the dough 

Jaffrey's paratha then gets cooked immediately, in a cast iron skillet that's been brushed with ghee.

Cooking the paratha

Of course, while you're doing all that laminating is when you can slip in herbs or spices - the Indian carry out near us with all the amazing veg options does a masala spice paratha that is to die. We didn't mess around with flavors, but I plan to this coming weekend, when Chef Spouse and I will be making paratha again.

Serious Eats offered a more complex laminating method. You start with a much larger disk (basically two portions of your dough rather than just the one), roll it out thin again and laminate, but then roll it up like a carpet, stretch it, and roll the ends in like a palmier cookie. 

Rolling the laminated paratha up, carpet-style

Stretching the paratha

Aw - isn't that cute?

Then you rest ~45 minutes, roll out again, and cook, first dry frying on your comal and then finishing with a quick fry in ghee in your cast iron. 

Now remember, we had TWO versions of the dough: one with regular whole wheat flour and one with pastry flour.

I suspected we might be in trouble with the pastry flour when I couldn't stretch it and had to do a single coil as a result, and I was right. Pastry flour lacks the gluten structure to be able to sit at room temperature all buttered up and still be able to work.

The rolled out regular flour paratha cooking 

(and yes, it's OK to giggle - it 100% looks like a butt)

Pastry flour = Food Lab FAIL 

YAY!

Once we had all that bread, we needed something to eat it with, so Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee whipped up some butter tofu and palak paneer for us, while Chef Spouse kept us occupied throughout the afternoon with various tamarind-based cocktails: a tequila version, a rum version, and a tiki-style drink that used the extra coconut milk from the butter tofu. No coconut milk left behind! 

They were all quite tasty, although Mad Kitchen Scientist observed, accurately, that they would be better served in opaque glasses, since the color was a little...odd. So we went with G&Ts for the meal. 

Your Food Labbers enjoying a yummy Indian feast

In conclusion, there is no reason not to make your own bread when you're making your own paneer or pindi or makhani. Naan requires a little thinking ahead - that rise takes about 60-90 minutes, so the whole thing start to finish is about 2-2.5 hours - but with roti or paratha, you could start the dough when you start work on the rest of the meal and have hot bread ready to go just as your main dish is finishing up. Chef Spouse and I will, in fact, be testing that theory this weekend.

Or, even shorter, homemade Indian meals will, henceforth, feature delicious Indian bread, too.

Food Labbing in a Time of Coronavirus

Was April 2019 really the last time we had a food lab? Apparently it was, because the blog doesn't lie. Well, Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee had a very busy summer, Chef Spouse and I did a ton of travel last fall (sigh.....), and then, of course, coronavirus hit. 

This has been an odd year for food lovers.

Weirdly, there have been some positive outcomes for those who care deeply about the quality and provenance of food. 

More people are cooking at home. More people are making things from scratch (hello, sourdough starter craze). More people planted vegetable gardens. More people signed up for CSAs (we resumed a CSA share, and I am SO PLEASED to report that I was able to find a local farm owned by a Black woman and operated by a team of women). Commercial suppliers enabled consumer accounts (well, they ALWAYS allowed anyone who wanted one to create an account - they just dramatically reduced the minimum order requirements, and more about that in a minute). 

It's also been a very hard time for food lovers. 

There have been shortages, both due to supply chain issues and due to panic buying. A woman in my larger circle, a long-time, serious baker, got savaged on social media for complaining that dilettante bakers were sucking up the entire flour supply. OK, sure, "flour privilege," but I also understood her frustration when MONTHS went by without being able to find flour of ANY type ANY where, when we all know significant amounts of it were sitting unused in the cabinets of people who moved on to learning French the following week and crocheting the week after and Peloton the week after that. 

Beloved restaurants and bars have struggled mightily. More casual places that always did significant carry out/delivery business mostly pivoted reasonably well and quickly, but the high-end places foodies dream of and plan for eating at had to radically and creatively re-tool their business models. And as cold weather closes in and the pandemic, which in the vast majority of the US was never successfully contained, ramps back up again, many of those beloved places will close, perhaps forever. That will throw a lot of people out of work and result in the hollowing out of a lot of business districts. 

Food related travel has ceased. And this was going to be a big year of that for your faithful Food Labbers. Chef Spouse and I were headed to Northern California once again in April, for a semi-regular conference speaking engagement I have, and this time we were were extending for a few days and heading to Napa because Chef Spouse had finally figured out the trick to landing a reservation at The French Laundry. He and I were also headed to Maui and the Big Island for a milestone birthday, with stays at a high-end eco resort, and in cottages on a coffee farm and a pineapple farm, with lots of diving (for him), snorkeling, kayaking, hiking, and, of course, eating planned. 

Most notably, 2020 marks ten years of Food Lab, and the core team - Chef Spouse and I, Mad Kitchen Scientist, and The Executive Committee - were headed to France for two weeks, with a week dining and sight-seeing our way through Paris (which I believe was to be a first for MKS and TEC), then a train hop to Avignon to pick up a rental car and another week at a gorgeous villa in Provence, repeating our Piedmont, Italy trip from a few years ago - farmer's markets, bistro lunches, hiking, and LOTS of cooking and wine drinking in the evenings. 

And the biggest hardship of all: one of the great joys of cooking seriously is sharing what you've created with people you love, and that's been right out for months. 

When DC passed into Phase 1 reopening in June, Chef Spouse and I were able to resume seeing friends in person - one household at a time and only one per week (to simplify contract tracing in case anyone did contract COVID-19), outdoors and physically distanced, and with everyone BYO everything. After three months of only interacting with other people via Zoom, it was a relief and major mental health boost.

During the past months, we've worked hard to incorporate some special food-related things, like ordering the most elaborate carry out dinner I've ever had for Chef Spouse's milestone birthday, figuring out how to get oysters direct from a local commercial oyster company, and setting up a consumer account with one of DC's top food purveyors.  At the time, there was literally no other way to find flour and there hadn't been for months. Thankfully, they allowed a minimum order of $250 (rather than the more typical $5,000). On the other hand, you're still mostly buying commercial quantities, so we split our 50 pound bag of King Arthur Sir Galahad with MKS and TEC (of course). We've continued to order from them for access to ingredients generally not available at the local Teeter (40 lb of pitted, frozen sour cherries? Why yes I will, thank you!) and to very high quality meats - and after butchering two entire lambs, breaking down an entire tenderloin of beef is really not a big deal.

But no Food Labbing, no parties, no dining out, no Supper Club (the  brain child of another friend of ours). Sadness. 

Well, that is about to change.

Health experts are recommending that people create small "pods" (or, as Chef Spouse prefers, "bubbles") to help us all safely get through the coming dark, cold months, when it will not be feasible to be together outdoors - at least not for very long - and when being locked in for months with just our own households just might make us all go crazy.  

Last weekend, as we were enjoying a lovely fall afternoon in Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee's backyard and toasting "Next year in Paris!", we proposed creating a pod with them and, after consideration, they accepted. 

Our first indoor, no masks, shared meal since, I think, our Super Bowl party, will be Thanksgiving - we all liked the symbolism of that, and it will be more than two weeks past MKS and TEC's in person votes on Election Day (Chef Spouse and I voted early by mail) - after which....WE'LL BE RESUMING FOOD LAB!

So watch this space.....