Snowshoe Naan

---------- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05

Title: Snowshoe Naan
Categories: Breads, Ethnic
Yield: 8 Breads

2 1/2 c Warm water
1 ts Dry yeast
1 1/2 c Whole wheat flour
4 To 5 c unbleached hard
-white or all-purpose flour
1 tb Salt
1 ts Nigella (black onion seed)

Place water in a large bread bowl, add yeast, and stir. Add whole wheat
flour and 1 cup white flour and stir well, then stir 100 times in the same
direction to develop the gluten (one minute). Let this sponge stand for 1/2
hour to 3 hours, covered. Sprinkle salt over the sponge, then add another
cup flour and stir. Continue adding flour and stirring until you can stir
no longer. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead
thoroughly, about ten minutes, until dough is smooth and easy to handle.
Clean out bowl, oil lightly, and return dough to bowl. Cover with plastic
wrap and let rise in a convenient place for 2 to 3 hours. When the dough
has more than doubled in volume, push down gently and turn out onto a
lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into eight equal pieces and shape
each into a flat oval shape, approximately 4x8" long. Leave these flat
disks out on the work surface and cover with plastic wrap to let rise for
approximately 20 minutes. Place quarry tiles or large baking stone on a
rack in the lower third of your oven, leaving a 1" space between the tiles
and the oven wall to allow air to circulate. Preheat oven to 450~. Five
minutes after the oven has preheated, begin shaping the first bread. Place
a small bowl full of cold water by the edge of your work surface. Using
your fingertips, first dip them in the water and then, beginning at one end
of the disk of dough, make tightly spaced indentations all over the surface
of the dough, so that it looks pitted, though not pierced through. Now
stretch the dough gently into a long oval strip by draping it over both
hands and pulling them apart gently. The dough should stretch and give, and
after several tries will extend to make a long oval about 12" long with
attractive stretch marks along it from the stretched indentations (hence,
the name "snowshoe bread"). Place the bread back on the work surface,
sprinkle with a pinch (less than 1/8 ts) of black onion seeds, then using
both hands, place the bread directly on heated quarry tiles or stone. While
the bread bakes, begin to shape the next bread. Cooking time for each bread
is approximately 4 minutes. You will soon develop a rhythm so that you can
bake two breads side by side across your oven, one going in when the other
is half done. When done, breads will have golden patches on top and a
crusty browned bottom surface. To keep breads warm and soft, wrap them in a
cotton cloth five minutes after they come out of the oven. Serve warm or at
room temperature. Source: Bakers' Dozen, Alford and Duguid, TVFN. MM
Waldine Van Geffen vghc42a@prodigy.com.

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