We've loved the bread we've gotten at Afghan restaurants, and we always eat way too much of it when we're there. In addition to finding something that looked like that bread, I also needed to find a bread recipe that did not require egg. I found a recipe on Allrecipes for noni Afghani (aka naan), which looked kind of similar, and although it did have an egg on the ingredient list, it was only for an egg wash, for which I could substitute butter. After the lolo buns that turned into lolo cake, I could only hope that bread/yeast experiment #2 actually resulted in recognizable bread.
The ingredients for our version of the bread were:
- 1 tbsp sugar ($0.06)
- about 1.75 cups of water, divided ($0)
- 1 tbsp yeast ($0.20)
- 4 cups flour, plus extra for kneading and rolling ($0.90)
- 1.5 tsp salt ($0.03)
- 1/4 cup grapeseed oil ($0.60)
- 2 tbsp butter, melted ($0.18)
The recipe made 8 pieces of bread for $1.97, of which we had 2.5 left over at the end of dinner. We saved them to eat with another round of moqueca, and using A's microwaving techniques, they turned out pretty well.
Since the bread needed to proof, the entire process of making it took about 2.5 hours from start to plate. The steps for making the bread in our kitchen, mostly following the recipe but not entirely, were:
1. In a small bowl, combine 1 tbsp sugar with 1/2 cup of warm water. Stir.
2. Add the yeast on top, lightly stir, and allow it to stand for 10 minutes until foamy. [Depending on how small of a bowl you use, keep an eye on that yeast mixture. After 10 minutes, ours had risen to the top of the bowl, looking dangerously like it was going to overflow, and I had to rush through step 3 to make sure it didn't.]
3. In a large bowl, combine 4 cups of flour with 1.5 tsp salt.
4. Make a well in the middle, and pour in the yeast mixture along with 1/4 cup grapeseed oil. Set up two small bowls nearby with the rest of the water and a small amount of flour.
5. Mix well, adding the water in small amounts as needed until the dough is soft.
6. Knead the dough in the bowl (or not - at this point in the summer, I was still kneading everything in the bowl instead of on the counter) for 5 minutes. Add little bits of flour to the dough or your hands as needed while kneading until it's not too sticky.
7. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to rise for about 1.5 hours.
8. Preheat oven to 350 degrees after the proofing time, and melt the butter.
9. Deflate the dough. [Since we really had no bread experience at this point, we had to look this up, and were very amused that it was really just firmly and gently pushing on it. It was also fun to do!] Divide into 8 pieces and roll into balls.
10. On a lightly-floured surface, roll the balls out into ovals about 1/2 inch thick. [I am not good at rolling into defined shapes. They just roll into whatever. I tried redoing one of them to make it a better oval and that might have been the worst one of the bunch.]
11. Draw 3 lines on top of each piece, and move the bread to lightly-oiled baking sheets. Brush with the melted butter.
12. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, and then remove from oven.
We needed two baking sheets to do this. The first baking sheet, which baked closer to 20-22 minutes on the top shelf, came out soft and fluffy. The second one ended up closer to the heat and also in the oven for longer because I was doing other things, making that one a little bit crunchier in parts. I was initially disappointed because it wasn't like the ones we had from our favorite Afghan restaurant in look or in taste, but it was never going to be, since they probably make theirs on a grill or in a tandoor, which we can't do. I felt like it was a little bland and didn't even taste the butter at first, but as I ate more of it, the butter came through, I really enjoyed the fluffiness of the bread, and it grew on me. A liked it, and B made it a primary part of his dinner (but then again, the kid usually loves bread), so I guess it was a success. I'd make it again, but maybe only half the amount so we don't fill up on bread alone.
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