Northern Indians do not have rice at every meal but eat a variety of breads. India breads are flat and round. One bread is shaped like a pancake and made with a special flour. It is called chapati.
Another kind of Indian bread is a crispy, fried bread called paratha. Many restaurants seem to offer naan because of this buttery flavor and moist texture. These long, puffy, oval flatbreads are baked in a tandir oven, which is a deep clay floor oven heated with charcoal.
This flatbread is crisp on the outside and soft inside. The shaped dough is placed in a gaddi (cushioned pad) and the naan are baked by slapping the dough onto the walls of the hot oven. One end of the dough hangs out over the fire, producing a pretty teardrop oval of bread about twenty inches long.
It is the aroma of the heated clay that gives the favor to this bread. Homemade naan are easy to bake in a conventional oven, and are usually made smaller out of convenience. The bread tastes good even without the special aroma.
Naan bread can be made with yeast, bicarbonate of soda, and baking powder or self-raising flour. Yoghurt is a nice tangy condition to this dough, accenting the flour and replacing the fermented yogurt starter called for in many recipes.
Flatbread: Naan bread
