The Easy Method for Making Restaurant-Quality Garlic Naan at Home

South Asia is home to hundreds of kinds of breads, from chapati and puri to bhakri and paratha. But perhaps the most well-known worldwide is naan. The region’s only leavened and baked bread, naan is a soft dough cooked at extremely high temperatures. When it’s at its best, it should be puffy with a crackling, thin, crisp crust spotted with bits of smoky char that breaks open to reveal airy, stretchy, slightly chewy bread underneath. 

It’s amazing plain, but even better when studded with garlic, painted with melted butter, and sprinkled with good salt, like in my recipe below. It’s savory and rich enough to eat on its own, but it also pairs well with almost any dish, including curries and soups. As a bonus, naan is relatively easy to make, requiring little more than your hands, a bowl, and a piping hot oven.

Origins of Naan and Its Classic Preparation

Naan has been a staple in Indian cuisine for centuries and is believed to have originated in Persia before making its way east to Asia. The word naan comes from the Persian nân-e sangak, meaning “bread baked on hot pebbles.” In South Asia, it is traditionally made by the Punjabi people of Northwestern India and Pakistan where it’s commonly baked in a tandoor—an outdoor terracotta oven that’s usually shared by a whole community. The bread is kneaded and shaped, then slapped onto the inner wall of a tandoor that gets incredibly hot—about 900°F—way hotter than any home oven. Within minutes, the tandoor produces soft, plush naan with just the right amount of chew and a lightly burnished exterior.

Those of us from outside of Northwestern India eat naan in restaurants with Punjabi or Mughlai food, just as Americans enjoy it when they dine out in the States. (Remember, India is a huge country with many regional cuisines.) At home, most of us eat the breads native to our regions, none of which are leavened or baked. In fact, in India, most people typically do not own ovens because their cooking and bread-making historically does not require them, which is why naan is traditionally prepared in communal tandoors.

Today you can find both plain and garlic naan in almost every corner of the world, and you don’t need an outdoor tandoor to make it. In fact, it’s easy to make at home and incomparable when enjoyed steaming hot fresh from the oven. I enjoy my homemade naan’s garlicky aroma and bite, rich buttery flavor, and supple chew more than any restaurant version I’ve tried.

How to Bake Naan at Home

In South Asia, wheat flour is categorized as either maida or atta, both of which are milled from hard durum wheat. Maida is most often used to make naan. It’s similar to American all-purpose flour, having had the germ and bran removed, while atta is a whole-wheat flour that includes the entire grain. For this reason I prefer to use all-purpose flour when I make naan at home here in the US. You can certainly use whole-wheat flour, but be aware that your naan will not be as light and fluffy. 

To keep the dough-making process as simple as possible, I prefer to knead it by hand. It’s a supple dough—enriched with yogurt, milk, and an egg to create its signature tender texture and rich flavor—and it’s easy to knead on the counter. For intense garlic flavor, I add minced raw garlic directly into the dough when kneading, and also brush the baked bread with a garlic-infused butter right before serving.

Once the dough is properly kneaded, you can let it proof at room temperature for just a couple hours before cooking, or you can refrigerate the shaped dough to proof overnight before baking. Just choose the proofing method that fits into your schedule. 

Perhaps the most challenging part to making garlic naan at home is mimicking the high heat of a tandoor. A home oven will never reach the extreme high heat of a tandoor. To try to solve this issue, I’ve seen many published recipes that call for cooking naan in a skillet on the stovetop or even cooking it on the grill to try to replicate the charring a tandoor produces. But I firmly believe baking the bread in the oven is the best cooking method at home. Tandoor itself translates to oven, and while your home oven won’t reach the 900℉ of a traditional tandoor, the enclosed cooking environment and steady heat flow of a home oven is still the best alternative. 

My one trick to boost the browning on the exterior of the naan when cooking in a home oven is to bake it directly on a preheated baking stone. (If you don’t have a baking stone, a flipped metal rimmed baking sheet will work fine.) The baking stone will retain heat and promote immediate browning on the naan, similar to the effect of slapping the naan directly on a tandoor’s wall.

Though this garlic naan is a great accompaniment to Indian food, it also pairs well with a variety of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes, such as hummus and muhammara. It’s easy enough to prepare for a weeknight meal, but special enough for a weekend gathering with friends.

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