Pav bread

 Making Pav bread from scratch for pav bhaji or vada pav is a tedious process compared to the convenience of buying it from stores. But let me point out the advantages - by making it at home, you can go as healthy as you like. Like instead of adding all maida, I made it half maida and half wheat flour. These taste extremely fresh. The short shelf life of homemade(fresh) stuff makes you wonder the the kind of preservatives that are added to the store bought stuff to keep them fresh for more than 2 weeks, sometimes even a month!!!!

And for convenience sake, you can always make it a day before. Lastly the house smells divine after baking bread! 

Try these next time and eat away happily! Enjoy!  

Ingredients(for 30 pavs)

6 cups flour- 3cups Maida + 3 cups wheat flour

Milk - 2 cups milk + 1 cup water - (room temperature to lukewarm) 

Sugar - 1 and 1/2 tbsp 

Salt - 3 tsp

Unsalted butter - 5 tbsp

Milk powder - 5 tbsp

Instant yeast - 4 and 1/2 tsp

Butter for brushing 

Method

Mix warm milk + yeast in a bowl. Since I am using instant, I don’t have to set it aside, but mixing this way ensures uniform mixing with the dough. 

In a mixing bowl add flour, salt, milk powder, sugar and mix well. Add milk + yeast and mix well. Add more or less 1 cup of room temperature water(as needed) and bring the dough together to a slightly sticky dough consistency. Add melted butter and knead the dough till it stops being sticky. 

Smear oil to the edges of the bowl and on and under the dough and let it rest for 1 hr till the dough doubles in size. 

Punch the dough couple of times and knead(or just fold) the dough. Divide the dough into equal shaped small balls. The above quantity was enough for 30 pavs. Grease a baking dish with butter/oil. Keep the dough separately as shown below.

Cover with a kitchen napkin and let it rest for another 1/2 hr to 1 hr. It will rise again. 

Preheat oven at 400 F. Bake for 15-20 min. After taking them out brush with butter. Enjoy! 

Recipe Reference - “https://www.cookingcarnival.com/pav/?fbclid=IwAR1PG8kqhPupVo6Z6sWASZVLpTzcfOBDYqCPuDQhb4HGTw7y5Un4JFbdT8w”

Notes - 

• I would add little more sugar to the recipe
• Make sure the salt is right. 
• Adding wheat flour dulls the taste and makes the bread little dense. 
• My friend Ashwini always advises against kneading and says just folding is enough.