Easy Naan Flatbread Recipe made with No Knead Refrigerator Bread Dough
The quest to make easy Naan Flatbread at home has been a bit of a Holy Grail for me. Until now! After trying lots of oven and pizza stone recipes over the years I had yet to get it just right. The wait is over. Here’s how you can make it too!
Store-bought stuff was OK, but lacked the fresh, warm kick that real naan had. It was also probably loaded with more preservatives than I would have liked.
I believed that my naan consumption would have to be limited to trips to Indian restaurants in our area, which is not so frugal. I also really wanted to be able to eat our Sauce Chicken recipe with Naan once in a while too. Enter the experiment with our No Knead Refrigerator Bread Dough.
And it was a success!
Easy Homemade Naan
Ingredients:
- No Knead Refrigerator Bread Dough
- Extra Flour for Rolling out
- Canola Oil
- Salt for seasoning (optional)
- Cast Iron Frying pan (or, in a pinch, a non-stick fry pan)
- Tongs for flippin’
Steps:
Mine were slightly smaller than tennis balls. You are going to roll them out very thin, so a little dough ball goes a long way.
Flour everything liberally: dough, work surface and rolling pin. The 5 Minute dough is wet, to begin with, so don’t be shy.
At this point, a little stickiness is OK, it will help the dough stay put in a stretched out shape.
Try to get it as big as the pan you are using – it will shrink a little when you pick it up to transfer it.
3. Heat the frying pan over medium heat. Most recipes call for ghee or clarified butter for the fat. I never have either on hand, so I use Canola Oil (it has a similarly high smoke point). How much you use will vary a bit with the size of your pan, but I started with 3 tsp (give or take). If you use too much, your naan will be more doughnut-like than bread like (Not the worst thing). I think I could even use less and get away with it.
2 – 3 minutes per side is usually enough. Feel free to check for browning if you aren’t sure – it is easy to turn once cooking is underway.
I roll out the next ball while the first batch is frying (lets be honest here, frying is what we are doing).
This quick and painless prep means that any meal that needs warm, pillowy* flatbread can have it. This same bread could stand-in for Greek Style Pita if you were making Souvlaki. Our daughter liked it so much she “could eat it every night”.
* Pillowy is a not a real word, but it is one I always see used to describe Flatbread.
So fire up the frying pan and let the flatbread begin. If you try it, comment and let me know if you survived the deliciousness…
Easy Naan Flatbread Recipe
This naan is soft and fluffy and so easy to make!
Ingredients
- No Knead Refrigerator Bread Dough
- Extra Flour for Rolling out
- Canola Oil
- Salt for seasoning (optional)
- Cast Iron Frying pan (or, in a pinch, a non-stick fry pan)
Instructions
- Cut dough into small pieces, slightly smaller than tennis balls. Flour everything liberally: dough, work surface and rolling pin. (The dough is wet, to begin with, so don’t be shy.)
- Roll the dough out to 1/8″ thin. At this point, a little stickiness is OK, it will help the dough stay put in a stretched out shape. Try to get it as big as the pan you are using – it will shrink a little when you pick it up to transfer it.
- Heat the frying pan over medium heat. Heat the Canola Oil. How much you use will vary a bit with the size of your pan, but I started with 3 tsp (give or take). Pick up your rolled out naan and lay it gently into your well-heated pan.
- Cover with a lid that fits your pan. Cook about 2 minutes per side is usually enough. Naan will be totally cooked in under 5 minutes.
PS – We’ve added this recipe to our Meal Plan Master List, you can see it here.
- This post covers the Basic No Knead Refrigerator Bread Dough (Start here!)
- Pizza Dough
- Basic Artisan Loaf
- Sandwich Style Loaf
- Cinnamon Rolls
- Pull Apart Monkey Bread
Ed Hicken is a DIY Creator with over 30 years of experience, a Financial Educator and a talented home cook.
I am so excited to find this recipe! We love Naan bread and use it for a greek chicken dish and pizzas. Have you ever frozen the bread after you have cooked it? I cannot wait to try this recipe!!
Good question Mary – we've never had any last long enough to try freezing. Any leftovers usually end up in lunches where they reheat fairly nicely. I can't see why freezing wouldn't work. If you try, post and let us know how it turns out.
Thanks for reading and for the idea…