I have always loved eating the food of different cultures, and Indian food is absolutely one of my favorites.

There is something about walking into an Indian restaurant and smelling all those spices before the food ever reaches the table. Cumin and coriander, cardamom and ginger, garam masala, fenugreek, turmeric—the aromas seem to tell you what you’re about to eat before you’ve taken the first bite.

I’ve always been fascinated by spices not only for the extraordinary flavor they bring to food, but for their long history of use in traditional food and wellness practices. Indian cooking understands something I deeply appreciate: spices aren’t an afterthought. They’re woven into the food.

While traveling on the LPGA tour, I ate Indian food often. It was one of the cuisines where I could usually find beautiful vegetarian dishes without feeling as though someone had simply removed the main ingredient from the plate. Later, as a vegan, Indian food remained something I loved, although navigating the dairy became a little more complicated.

And there was one particular problem.

The naan.

An Indian meal without warm naan has always felt a little incomplete to me.

There I would be with an aromatic curry and basmati rice, all that beautiful sauce sitting in front of me—and no warm piece of bread to tear apart and scoop it up with.

Naan looks deceptively simple, but traditional versions commonly use yogurt in the dough and are often brushed generously with ghee or butter after baking. That combination helps give naan the tenderness and richness people love, but it also meant that for many years I usually couldn’t order it. 

And I always felt a little cheated.

Because naan and curry belong together.

I have one particularly happy naan memory from the years I spent studying homeopathy in San Diego. There was an Indian restaurant I loved that had many vegan choices—and, almost unbelievably to me at the time, their naan was vegan.

And these weren’t little pieces of naan.

They were enormous.

I remember carrying one of those huge warm breads back to the table feeling almost like a little kid who had just been handed something wonderful at a candy store. It sounds funny now, but when you’re accustomed to always being the person who has to say, No naan for me, discovering that you can finally have the naan is a surprisingly joyful thing.

And it was delicious.

That experience stayed with me, and eventually I decided there was no reason I should have to wait until I happened upon a restaurant serving vegan naan. If I could learn to make the curries I loved at home, I could certainly learn to make the bread that belonged beside them.

So I did what I tend to do. I started making naan.

I tried different doughs and different proportions. Some were too heavy. Some were too dry. Some were really just flatbread wearing a naan costume. What I wanted was the naan I remembered: soft and pliable, slightly chewy, blistered and charred in places, with those wonderful bubbles that swell almost magically when the dough meets intense heat.

The real magic of naan happens in a tandoor, a cylindrical clay oven capable of tremendous heat. The shaped dough is placed directly against the scorching inner wall, where it sticks and cooks remarkably quickly. The intense heat creates the characteristic blistering, puffing, and char that are so difficult to duplicate in an ordinary home oven. 

If you ever have an opportunity to watch someone skilled at working a tandoor, watch them. There is an artistry to the movement—stretching the dough, placing it against that impossibly hot wall, and then retrieving a beautifully blistered bread.

I have great respect for that art.

I also have absolutely no intention of attempting to slap dough onto the wall of an 800-degree clay oven in my kitchen. 

Fortunately, we don’t have to.

A very hot cast-iron skillet gives us a wonderful home version. It can’t duplicate a tandoor completely, and I don’t pretend that it does, but it gives the dough the immediate blast of heat it needs to bubble, blister, and char while keeping the inside soft and tender.

And because I love fermentation as much as I love bread, I’ve given this recipe two paths.

The yeasted version is wonderful when you want naan without planning very far ahead. The sourdough version gives me another way to use the kind of fermentation I’ve come to love in my breadmaking. Both begin with the same goal: a soft dough enriched with plant-based yogurt and soy milk, cooked quickly over intense heat and brushed while still warm.

Then comes my favorite part.

Garlic. Cilantro. And a little melted vegan butter or beautiful olive oil brushed over the hot bread.

Now put an aromatic curry over basmati rice. Add a spoonful of something tangy—I love using my gently spiced tomato jam in the place where I might otherwise reach for a tamarind chutney—and tear off a warm piece of naan.

Use it like the world’s most delicious spoon.

Scoop up some rice. Catch some curry and sauce. Get a little tomato jam in there. Then eat the whole glorious bite with your hands.

That, to me, is a flavor explosion worth sitting down for.

I also happen to be someone who will happily eat almost any good flatbread placed in front of me. Give me dough and toppings and I will probably find a reason to love it. But naan has its own personality. It isn’t pita. It isn’t focaccia. It isn’t pizza. And it isn’t simply an accompaniment you put beside the “real” meal.

It completes the meal.

Perhaps that is why learning to make it myself felt like getting back something I’d been missing for all those years.

Now when I make Indian food at home, there is no bread sitting on someone else’s plate that I can’t eat. There is a stack of warm naan wrapped beneath a towel in my own kitchen, waiting to be torn apart and passed around the table.

And I think bread is particularly good at doing that—crossing cultures, carrying memories, and giving our hands something to share.

So make the curry. Steam the basmati rice. Heat the cast iron until it’s good and hot.

And don’t forget the naan.

Because sometimes the thing sitting beside the meal is the very thing that makes the meal feel complete.

Another Bread That Holds You Together.