Naan bread is THEE staple bread in India and can be served with almost any of their classic dishes. This bread is almost interchangeable with the Greek style bread, pita bread, but there are subtle differences among them. Naan bread is one of my favorite breads that I always order from Indian style restaurants because it goes so well with the food there and I was excited to try and make it. However, this dish does take some time, most of it is waiting until the dough is done but hey, if done right, it’ll be worth it. I honestly have never cooked bread before, so I called up my sister to help me through the steps and she helped guide me through the steps. In order to make the bread you will need:

• 1 tsp of active dry yeast
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 4 cups of flour
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 3/4 cup of whole milk (room temp.)
• 1/2 cup of full-fat yogurt
• 3 tbsp minced garlic
• Vegetable oil
• 1 stick of melted butter (unsalted)

I know, there are a lot of ingredients, but it isn’t as bad as it seems. A lot of this recipe comes down to patience, and it can be easily done by anyone. The reward will be worth it in the end because you’ll be able to have great dipping bread if you were to make hummus (which you totally should, you can learn how to make it if you check out my last blog). I’ll be following cooking steps from here, but I’ll tell you how I changed what they did a little in the upcoming steps:

• In a bowl, mix the yeast, sugar, and water. Let it sit for about 10 minutes
• While it sits, get a bigger bowl to mix the flour, baking soda, and baking powder
• After 10 minutes, take the yeast mixture and combine it with the yogurt and milk. Stir until dry
• Lightly flour your work surface and knead the dough with your hands until the dough is smooth and soft (should take about 2-4 minutes of kneading)
• Oil up a bowl liberally and put the dough in the bowl. wrap the bowl with plastic and let it sit for about 2 hours, or doubled in size (That is where the patience comes in).
• Flour your work surface liberally and knead the dough a handful of times. Cut the dough into 12 equal portions and roll them out into 6-inch ovals
• Butter the dough up and sprinkle garlic all over them right before tossing them onto a skillet/pan over medium-high heat for about a 45 seconds each side. Then cover the pan for about a minute to let the dough rise.
• Finally, take them out and brush them lightly with more butter and sprinkle it with salt while it is still hot. Let it cool down a little, and enjoy some delicious bread

This recipe slightly tested my patience. I ended up having to make this dish 3 times because I didn’t let it sit long enough the first time, so my bread was really dense and doughy, and then I forgot about it and let it sit way too long. Making sure to check up on the bread is key because on average it takes about 2 hours for it to rise to the right size, but bread rising is affected by moisture in the air and even the altitude at which you let it sit. Bread baking really is an art, and I don’t think my bread was up to par, but 6 hours worth of trying was really my breaking point. However, I found that researching about this bread was the most interesting part about it. Traditionally, naan bread is cooked sideways; By that I mean, is that they slap the dough to the side of a Tandoori Oven(To see what it looks like, click the link!), and since it is sideways, the dough gets dragged down and thinned by gravity giving the bread it’s signature elliptical shape. Having the bread put on the side of the oven allows for more room to cook inside the oven, so it was a killer way to multitask cooking. I hope you enjoyed today’s blog, come back next time for another appetizer dish called Potato Kebab!