Want to diversify your homemade bread baking game? This Persian flat bread is just the ticket. It’s called Nan-e Barbari and it is delicious.
This recipe is adapted from one that is regularly featured at The Hot Bread Kitchen in East Harlem in New York City. Hot Bread Kitchen is a bakery that trains low-income minority women, many of them refugees, to open their own food businesses or to compete for management-level positions in the food industry. The bakery’s business model incorporates many of the international breads that the trainees have prepared in their home countries and/or in their home kitchens—challahs, focaccias, tortillas and nan-e barbari to name a few. I have several dozen cookbooks on baking (I’m an unabashed cookbook collector!) and The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook is one of the first cookbooks I reach for when I want to make an interesting loaf.
Nan-e Barbari, according to Persian food authority and cookbook author Najmeih Batmanglij (Food of Life), is one of Iran’s most popular breads. It is commonly served freshly-baked for breakfast with fresh feta, black olives and sweet tea. I paired mine with a thick lentil soup.
Batmanglij writes that Nan-e Barbari is to Persian cuisine what the baguette is to French cuisine–indispensable!
Nan-e Barbari: Persian Flat Bread
Ingredients
- Dough
- 1 2/3 to 1 3/4 C. lukewarm water
- 2 1/4 t. active dry yeast or instant yeast
- 4 C. plus 3 T. unbleached bread flour
- 1 1/2 t. salt
- Glaze
- 2 t. unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1/2 t. sugar
- 1/2 t.vegetable oil
- 1/3 C. cool water
- Topping
- 1 t. sesame seeds
- 1 t. nigella (black onion) seeds or poppy seeds
Directions
- Step 1 Put lukewarm water, yeast, flour and salt into a large bowl of a stand mixer and mix. Then, knead with the dough hook of your mixer for 5-8 minutes. Alternatively, mix and knead the dough by hand 5 to 8 minutes. You want the dough to be smooth and reasonably soft. (Use the lesser amount of water in humid summer weather and the greater amount of water during dry winter weather.)
- Step 2 Put kneaded dough into a lightly-greased large bowl, cover and let the dough rise for about 1 hour. You want the dough to be nearly doubled at this point.
- Step 3 Remove the dough from the bowl, gently deflate and divide into two pieces on a lightly-floured work surface.
- Step 4 Shape each of the two pieces of dough into a log of approximately 9 inches long. Tent the dough with a lightly-greased piece of plastic wrap. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
- Step 5 Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. If you are using a baking steel or pizza stone, place it on the lowest rack of your oven or on the oven floor. If you are using a baking sheet, place the baking sheet on the middle rack in your oven.
- Step 6 While the oven is heating, prepare the glaze by combining the flour, sugar, oil and water in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium. Stir the mixture constantly while you are heating it. You want the glaze to thicken to a consistency that will coat the back of a spoon. This should take less than a minute. Remove the thickened glaze from the heat and set aside. The glaze, called roomal, will add a layer of moisture to the top of your bread and will enhance your bread’s crust.
- Step 7 Remove the plastic wrap cover from your two logs of dough. Working with one log of dough at a time, gently deflate the dough and flatten it into a 14 inch by 5 inch rectangle. Place the dough on a piece of parchment paper.
- Step 8 Using a chopstick or the long handle of a wooden spoon, press 5 lengthwise groves into the dough rectangle. You can rub a bit of flour on the chopstick/spoon handle to keep it from sticking to the bread dough.
- Step 9 Brush half of the glaze over the loaf and sprinkle with seeds. If you don’t have nigella seeds, you can substitute poppy seeds.
- Step 10 Slide the prepared dough (on the parchment) onto the baking steel/pizza stone or onto the baking pan in your preheated oven. If you have a pizza peel, put the dough (on the parchment) on the peel and slide it onto the baking steel/pizza stone or baking pan. Using the pizza peel makes it less likely that you will burn your fingers!
- Step 11 Bake for 15 to 18 minutes. The top of the bread should be a pretty golden brown and the bottom of the bread should be lightly browned. Remove bread from oven and set on a rack to cool while you repeat the process with the second loaf. This bread is best eaten fresh but you can wrap it and it will be tender for a couple of days. Or, you can freeze it (wrapped) for longer storage.
