Easy Homemade Naan
Skillet Bread That Makes Everything Better
There is a version of dinner that becomes significantly more exciting the moment homemade bread enters the picture. Not because the food itself changed, but because warm, freshly cooked bread has a way of making everything around it feel more intentional. More like a meal and less like a Tuesday.
This naan is that bread. It comes together in one bowl, rises in about an hour and a half, and cooks in a hot skillet in under two minutes per piece. The dough is simple and forgiving, the kind that doesn’t require much technique to handle well. What comes off the pan is soft and slightly chewy with golden blistered spots across the surface, exactly the texture that makes naan worth tearing apart and dragging through whatever is beside it on the table.
If you keep a sourdough starter, the sourdough naan version is already on this blog and is absolutely worth making. But this one exists because not every night is a sourdough night, and a great naan recipe that starts with pantry staples and a packet of yeast deserves its own place here too.
What Honey Is Doing in a Bread Dough
Honey in this recipe is pulling double duty. It feeds the yeast during the bloom, giving the active dry yeast something to consume immediately so it activates quickly and reliably. It also contributes a very faint sweetness to the finished bread, nothing that reads as sweet exactly, more like a roundness that keeps the dough from tasting flat.
The bloom step is five minutes and worth taking seriously. Warm water, honey, and yeast left to sit together will begin to foam and smell faintly yeasty when the yeast is alive and active. If nothing happens after five minutes, the yeast is likely old or the water was too hot. Starting over at this stage saves the entire batch.
Kneading Is Short and the Dough Will Tell You When It’s Ready
Three to five minutes of kneading on a floured surface is all this dough needs, which is significantly less than a lean bread dough would require. The egg and oil in the mixture help develop the dough’s structure without as much mechanical work. You’re looking for a dough that is smooth and slightly tacky but not sticky, one that springs back slowly when you press a finger into it. If it tears when stretched, give it another minute. If it stretches without snapping back at all, it’s ready to rest.
The rise time of one and a half to two hours brings the dough to roughly double its original size. A warm spot in the kitchen speeds this up. A cooler room slows it down. The dough is more patient than the clock.
The Skillet Does What the Tandoor Does
A traditional tandoor oven runs at temperatures that no home kitchen appliance can match, which is where the characteristic char and puff of restaurant naan comes from. A heavy skillet over medium heat gets you closer than you might expect. Cast iron is ideal because it holds and distributes heat evenly, but any heavy-bottomed pan will work.
No oil goes in the pan. The naan cooks directly on the dry surface, which is what produces those golden, slightly blistered spots rather than an evenly browned fry. Thirty to sixty seconds per side is all it takes. The naan will begin to puff up as steam builds inside the dough, which is the visual cue that the first side is ready to flip. Don’t walk away from the pan during this step. The window between perfectly blistered and overdone is short.
Roll Thin and Work Quickly
An eighth of an inch is thinner than most people’s instinct when rolling out dough, and it matters here. Naan rolled too thick takes longer to cook through, which means the outside has more time to toughen before the inside is done. Thin naan puffs dramatically in the pan, cooks through in under a minute, and stays soft and pliable even after it cools.
Roll one piece at a time and cook it while the next one is being rolled. The rhythm of this recipe, roll, cook, roll, cook, means the whole batch of eight is done in well under thirty minutes from the first piece hitting the pan.
Easy Homemade Naan
Ingredients
- 375 g All Purpose Flour
- 2 tsp Active Dry Yeast
- 175 g Warm Water
- 20 g Honey
- 20 g Olive Oil
- 20 g Milk
- 1 Egg (beaten)
- 8 g Salt
Instructions
- Add the yeast, warm water, and honey to a large bowl. Stir and allow the yeast to bloom for 5 minutes. Then, add the flour, honey, olive oil, milk, beaten egg, and salt. Mix the dough thoroughly to create a shaggy dough.
- Remove the dough from the bowl and knead it on a floured surface for 3-5 minutes. Place the dough back into the bowl, cover, and allow it to rise for 1.5-2 hours, or until doubled in size.
- Once the dough has doubled, punch out the air and transfer it to a floured shaping surface. Cut the dough into 8 equal pieces.
- Heat a large skillet over medium heat. On a well floured surface, roll your naan into a round shape, roughly 1/8” thick.
- Cook the naan for 30-60 seconds on each side. The naan should begin to puff up and have golden brown spots throughout the surface.
- Serve warm or allow to cool and store in an airtight container.
