Naan (Tandoor-Baked)

Ingredients

• 500 g plain white flour, plus extra for dusting
• 7 g instant dried yeast
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 200 g full-fat plain yogurt, room temperature; not low-fat
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 30 g ghee or unsalted butter, melted, plus extra for finishing
• 150 ml warm water, approximately, to achieve 65–70% hydration; dough must be tacky
• For the garlic-ghee finish
• 60 g ghee
• 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 small bunch fresh coriander, leaves only, finely chopped

Method

1. 1
   Combine the flour, yeast, salt, and sugar in a large bowl, then add the yogurt, beaten egg, and melted ghee. Mix well, then add the warm water gradually, working the dough until it comes together into a single mass — it must be distinctly tacky and softer than most bread doughs, because that extra moisture is what produces the open, steaming blisters in the intense heat to come. Knead for 8–10 minutes by hand until smooth and elastic; the dough is ready when it springs back slowly when pressed but does not tear.
2. 2
   Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover tightly, and rest at room temperature for a minimum of 2 hours, turning the bowl once so the dough does not skin over on one side — overnight in the refrigerator produces markedly better complexity, because the slow cold fermentation gives the yogurt's tang and the yeast's fragrance time to develop fully. The dough is ready when it has roughly doubled and smells of mild lactic fermentation — faintly tangy, faintly yeasty.
3. 3
   Prepare the garlic-ghee finish before cooking, so it is ready at the moment each naan comes off the heat. Melt the 60 g ghee in a small pan over a low flame, add the sliced garlic, and heat gently until the slices turn pale gold and the ghee smells sweet and nutty — do not allow the garlic to brown beyond gold, because even thirty seconds further takes it from sweet to acrid and the flavour cannot be corrected once it is in the fat. Remove from the heat and keep warm.
4. 4
   Divide the rested dough into eight equal portions and work one at a time, keeping the rest covered so they do not dry out and form a skin. Hand-stretch each piece rather than rolling it uniformly — begin at the centre and work outward, allowing the edges to remain slightly thicker than the middle, because that uneven thickness creates the characteristic rise and char pattern of a real naan rather than a flat, uniform cracker. The finished shape is an irregular teardrop, roughly 25 cm in length.
5. 5
   This is where the dish lives or dies. For the home stovetop method, invert a cast-iron skillet and preheat it over the highest possible flame for a full 5 minutes until the surface is visibly smoking — or, for the broiler method, cook the naan on the inverted skillet directly under a preheated broiler, which reproduces the radiant overhead heat of a tandoor interior. Lay the stretched naan directly onto the inverted surface; at any lower temperature the dough bakes slowly rather than blasting steam upward into blisters, and the result is irreversibly flat and dull. The naan is done when its surface has lifted into irregular blisters and the underside carries dark leopard-spotted char — 90 seconds to 2 minutes total.
6. 6
   Remove each naan immediately from the heat and brush at once with the warm garlic-infused ghee, so the residual heat of the bread draws the garlic aroma through the surface before it begins to cool. Scatter fresh coriander leaves over the top. Serve without delay — naan is at its correct texture only in the first 2–3 minutes after leaving the heat.