This soft, delicious flat bread is a perfect accompaniment for a warm Indian curry, but it is also perfect for your butter and honey.
I always enjoy Indian food, and recently I have started making sourdough naan to make our Indian feasts a bit more exciting. This is a simple, no fuss recipe that is very forgiving. It waits for you while you do life. It rolls out easily (no big muscles required), and as long as your sourdough starter has some life to it, it just always works.
These little naan breads stay soft, even a few days after you have cooked them, and they are a perfect substitute for a tortilla or a mini pizza crust. This is one of my family’s favorite sourdough recipes.
One perk to cooking this in my house is that while I roll them out, my 14 year old daughter puts them in the pan and flips them. She enjoys doing this, and we get to spend a little quality time together. Good bread plus time with your teenager is a win/win.
Ingredients:
The secret ingredients that make this naan bread so special are the yogurt, butter, and honey.
The yogurt gives it a bit of tang, but it also adds softness and gives your bread more rise as it cooks. Like I said, this bread just always works, and the yogurt is part of the reason.
Butter is not often found in naan bread recipes, but I have found that it adds softness, pliability, and amazing flavor.
And finally, the honey adds a touch of sweet that is barely noticeable but irresistible. You will have a hard time stopping at one naan bread.
About the Recipe:
You will need flour, active sourdough starter, butter, yogurt, milk, salt, and honey. For this recipe, I place all ingredients in my mixing bowl together and let the dough hook work it’s magic to mix them up.
If you do not have a mixer with a dough hook, you can still make amazing bread. I recommend mixing the wet and dry ingredients first and then combining them using your hands until the dough comes together.
After the ingredients are mixed, cover the bowl and let it long ferment for 8-20 hours, depending on how warm your kitchen is and your schedule. You can come back to it to stretch and fold it a few times, but I don’t do that for this recipe.
After the long fermentation time, you will cut your dough into pieces. I prefer mine to be somewhere between 1-2 inches in diameter, but you can cut your dough as large or small as you want your naan to be. I have had this recipe make as many as 32 naan breads and as few as 24. It is really just up to you.
Begin by preheating on medium heat a dry cast iron pan that has no oil or butter in it. After rolling the dough into a circle that is about 1/4 inch thick, put it into your hot cast iron pan . I like to use two cast iron pans to speed up the cooking process. Cook one side for a minute or two and flip it to cook the other side. The naan bread will have brown bubbles when it is ready.
If you don’t want to long ferment the naan, this is a perfect recipe for sourdough discard. Just simply add 1 tsp baking soda to the recipe and cook it up. It won’t have the same benefits as long fermented sourdough, but it will be ready much faster.
I hope your family enjoys this recipe as much as mine does!
Recipe:
4 cups flour
1 cup sourdough starter
6 Tbsp melted butter (not too hot)
1 cup warm milk
1/2 cup Greek style yogurt
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp honey
Optional if not long fermenting: 1 tsp baking soda
Using a stand mixer and a dough hook, place all ingredients in the mixing bowl and mix until the dough has come together and is thoroughly mixed. Let ferment for 8-20 hours. After fermentation, cut the dough into pieces that are around 2 inches in diameter. Roll out each piece into a round flat circle that is approximately 1/4 inch thick. Cook on medium heat in a dry cast iron pan, about 1-2 minutes per side.
I hope you enjoy this naan bread as much as we do!