---
title: "Lockdown Recipe of the Day: Garlic & Coriander Naan Bread"
description: "You can cook a decent pot of rice and a few sambals to go with that curry you love to make. But naan bread: must be challenging, right? Not really. Just follow some simple steps and Balvindra’s your uncle."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "TGIFOOD"
author: "Tony Jackman"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/tonyjackman/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-05-05-lockdown-recipe-of-the-day-garlic-coriander-naan-bread/"
published: "2020-05-05T12:19:38"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 385
---

# Lockdown Recipe of the Day: Garlic & Coriander Naan Bread

> You can cook a decent pot of rice and a few sambals to go with that curry you love to make. But naan bread: must be challenging, right? Not really. Just follow some simple steps and Balvindra’s your uncle.

By Tony Jackman · Published 5 May 2020, 14:19 SAST

## Content

**Ingredients**

1.5 cups warm water (not hot)

1 Tbs sugar

6g wet yeast or 2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 teaspoon salt

3 cups stone ground white bread flour

Garlic butter

Fresh coriander leaves

**Method**

Combine the yeast, sugar and warm water in a bowl and leave for five minutes until it foams.

Add flour and salt, mix and turn out onto a floured surface.

Knead well and form it into a ball.

Oil a bowl lightly, put the dough in and cover with a damp towel. Leave in a warm place to rise for 40 minutes.

Turn on to a floured surface, divide into small pieces (you’ll have to judge the amount that will make one naan, given that it is rolled thinly – a few tries will give you the hang of it).

Roll each clump – aiming to get a teardrop shape – to a thickness of about 0.3cm.

Make some garlic butter: melt butter, add finely chopped garlic, stir until the garlic is lightly browned and nutty. Finely chop some coriander leaves.

Now, if you have a tandoor you will of course slap it onto the inner wall of the hot Indian oven. Or you could grill them on a lightly oil oven pan in a hot oven. But let’s save you the trouble of that. Just use a heavy frying pan, lightly oiled, over the highest heat. They cook very quickly, a minute or two on each side. Watch as they cook for bubbles to form, then lift the edge to peek underneath. You’re looking for – on the cooked side – the craters formed by those bubbles. Flip and cook the second side. Remove and drench with the garlic butter, sprinkle chopped coriander on top, and Balvindra is indeed your uncle. **DM**

*This recipe was first published in April 2019 with Tony Jackman’s GastroTurf column about the intricacies of making a curry.*[*Read the full column here*](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-04-12-bark-bite-the-warmth-and-heat-of-a-curry-night/)*.*

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*Send your Lockdown Recipes to tony@dailymaverick.co.za with a hi-resolution horizontal (landscape) photo.*

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