Naan

Naan is one of my favorite breads. It is easy to make at home and best fresh out of the skillet. We like to eat this with veggie curries or stews.

naan ingredients

• ½ cup warm water

• 1 teaspoon sugar

• 1 teaspoon salt, plus more to sprinkle on the bread

• 2 ¼ teaspoons yeast

• ¼ cup buttermilk (or add 1 teaspoon lemon juice to milk)

• 1 Tablespoon olive oil

• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

• 4 Tablespoons butter

1. Stir together the water, salt, and sugar. Sprinkle yeast over top of the water and let it sit a few minutes until it gets foamy (if you're using instant yeast, you can skip the wait time).

2. Add the buttermilk and olive oil to the water mixture. Add the flour and mix together, kneading until the dough is consistent.

3. Shape the dough into a ball and coat lightly in oil. Place in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise for an hour.

4. Melt the butter. Heat a pan over medium heat on the stove. Divide the dough into 8 roughly equal parts.

5. Roll the first small dough ball out until it is fairly thin, about 1/8 inch. Brush melted butter onto one side of the rolled out dough. Place the naan dough, butter side down, in the hot pan. You should see bubbles form in the dough pretty quickly. Brush the side of the dough now facing up with butter.

6. Once you see lots of bubbles and at least a few large bubbles, flip the naan over. You should have a golden to medium-dark-in-spots color on the side now facing up. Cook until you get nice browning on the bubbles (the rest of the bread will stay fairly pale).

7. Remove from the pan and sprinkle salt on the naan while its still hot. Repeat the rolling, brushing butter, cooking, and salting for each naan.

8. Naan is best fresh and hot. Store on a wire rack if you must hold them for any length of time.

naan cooking

NOTES:

You can use a stand mixer with a dough hook to knead this dough, but it doesn’t require extensive kneading so I usually do this by hand.

You can easily make this vegan by substituting unsweetened, unflavored almond milk (or your favorite milk substitute) and a little lemon juice for the buttermilk and using a vegan butter substitute such as Country Crock or Earth Balance sticks.

Dough will hold in the fridge for several days. I like to divide it into naan sized balls (step 4) and store the extras in the fridge until we are ready to eat them. Cooked naan does not store well.