Naan, also referred to as naan bread outside India, is an umbrella term for a family of leavened and oven-baked flatbreads staple to the northern parts of South Asia (North India, Pakistan, etc.). The word naan itself means bread in Persian, so it pretty much does what it says on the tin.

Typically, naan is made of maida (refined/AP flour), and is leavened using yeast or a bread starter (a bit of the previous batch of dough), and then flattened by hand into a roughly triangular shape, before being stuck to the walls of a tandoor, an extremely hot clay oven. The bread cooks in less than a minute, and it’s detached and extracted by means of long hooks.

Naan goes really well with basically everything. Literally any curry in India would go great with a naan. Another way to spice up your naan is to butter it (butter naan, duh), or to actually spice it, either when you’re kneading the dough, or in some melted ghee, or just sprinkled over top.

Traditional naan is to be made only in a tandoor, because the smoky charry flavour of coal-fired bread has no real parallels, but people still make naan at home in electric ovens and even on pans (tawa naan).

The recipe below doesn’t use yeast, but instead uses baking soda to leaven the bread. It’s a bit quicker, a bit more convenient, but if you honestly want great naan, you should go to your local tandoori shop and get some from them! ~Team