Pan-fried garlic butter bread

Fact: The smell of freshly made bread will make the least hungry person drool. Everytime when I walk pass by any bread factory, pastry shop, cake store - it's like suddenly there's a gravitational pull towards the shop. I have to go take a look... just a look. Something about the doughy, sweet or salty, crispy or fluffy, warm heavenly buns and pastries are just magnets of.. all humans alike. Every culture in history has some version of doughy goodness, and let me tell you, I am not complaining about that. I recently went to get take out and ended up with one whole extra order of lamb rogan josh (yes COVID related over ordering) - what better way to mop it up with a couple of freshly made pan-friend garlic butter breads?

My inspiration was initially the garlic naan - which for the record I did order with my meal, and pretty much inhaled. Since we have continuously proved that bread making is not too hard during lockdown, I was determined to make this happen. As soon as I realized I didn't have one key ingredient - plain yogurt, I decided to just make it up and go with it anyway. Side bar: I'm not sure who buys plain yogurt regularly anyway? It honestly tastes like nothing. If I'm not making naan, let's try something else - why not pan fried bread?

Pan fried bread in Chinese is "Jian bin". "Jian" is the pan frying action with a little bit of oil, hot pan. One word, applicable everywhere, super efficient. You can "Jian" dumplings, you can "Jian" fish, or you can "Jian" tofu. In China, the oven is something not everyone has, a stove top pan is more likely the go-to cooking method which you can perform anything from pan-fry, stir-fry, steam, boil, stew, you get the picture. "Bin" is a disk-like doughy structure, it can be pan friend, steamed, or baked, sometimes with some filling or plain. I'm combining my Chinese roots and Indian inspirations today, yay, exciting!

What you need:

- 2 cups of all purpose flour

- 3/4 cup of warm water

- 1 tsp of instant yeast

- 1 tsp of sugar

- 3 tbsp of mayonnaise

- 1 tsp olive oil

- 1 tsp of salt

- 2-3 garlic cloves, crush

- 1 tbs of butter, melted

- chop 1 tbsp of cilantro

Recipe:

- Mix flour, yeast, water, mayo, sugar, oil, and salt together. You want to ensure it's all mixed well. Some suggest mixing the dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately then put together after. I on the other hand, just poured everything in a single large bowl and mixed. It didn't seem to make a difference, my dough was pretty even and there isn't any chunks of uneven mixture. One bowl is the way to go.

- Cover with glass lid and place the bowl of dough in the sun outside. Given we are fully in summer, the sun rays will help the dough rise and become a big, air pocketed, fluffy blob. Takes about an hour.

- In the mean time, mix garlic, cilantro and butter, with some salt, let that sit aside so the flavors soak in. 

- Dust the table top with a dash of flour and take the double ball out so you can roll it on the counter for a big. Make a log and cut into 6-8 equal pieces.

- Roll each piece into a ball, the dough is so soft and easy to roll out. I simply stretched the dough into a flat disk-like structure. No rolling pin needed. I took my rolling pin out for photo-op, did not use it at all fam. 

- Add like a tsp (very small) amount of oil in you heated pan, turn heat down to med/med-high, throw the dough disk on the pan, rotate it every 10 seconds or so, until there are some crispy/burn bits and the top is bubbling a bit.

- Turn the disk upside down, same thing other side. Take that out, brush on some garlic butter with cilantro. serve warm.

The result?? SOoooooOO good. We ate A-L-L of the bread with our meal. I was hoping to save some for the next day but forget that it's all gone. If you have a soupy/saucy dish, this is a great item to go with it. Like I said, nothing beats fresh bread.