Easy Sourdough Naan Bread Recipe • Cultured Guru (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to good sourdough bread? ›

More stretch and folds. Typically, people do about 3-5 stretch and folds in the process of making a loaf of sourdough bread. If you do 2-4 more of them, it helps produce a more sour dough.

Naan is a fermented dough that puffs and crisps slightly upon heating. Yeast is the little guy that's responsible for that fermentation and leavening.

The signature sourdough flavor comes from a combination of lactic and acetic acids, created as the dough rises and ferments. Refrigerating the dough encourages the production of more acetic acid, which is the tangier of the two. Thus, this bread with its refrigerated starter has the ideal balance of sour flavor.

All-purpose Flour

It strikes a perfect balance of softness and structure, making it an ideal choice for various recipes. Due to its wide availability and affordability, all-purpose flour is often my top recommendation for creating and maintaining a sourdough starter.

For more tang: Incorporate some rye flour and/or whole wheat flour early in the bread-making process, such as when feeding the mother culture and the preferment. Rye flour in particular will help your culture produce some acetic acid.

Using flours with more ash, or mineral, content, will yield more sour taste. If you can't get enough ash, adding a bit of whole wheat flour to your recipe, which is what is done with the 20% Bran Flour, will boost the sour of a bread. Conversely, using a lower ash flour will tend to produce a milder bread.

Use Starter Later: Use starter after its peak. It will have risen, doubled in size and is starting to fall back down. The yeast are still active at this stage but more bacteria are present, and the starter smells much more acidic. A larger amount of bacteria will develop resulting in more sour flavored bread.

A sourdough starter is a cultivated wild yeast culture made by fermenting water and flour together and maintained with regular feeding. Levain is an off-shoot of the sourdough starter, typically fed a higher ratio of water and flour to increase activity, for the sole purpose of being used to leaven dough.

Is it cheaper to make your own sourdough bread? ›

So if you look solely at the ingredients, it is cheaper to make your own sourdough. But if you bring other factors into it - it might not be as cheap. This post aims to show you how you can bake a classic sourdough loaf with a little work and no fancy equipment.

A levain, also called a leaven or levain starter, is an off-shoot of your sourdough starter, and it's a mixture of fresh flour, water, and some ripe starter. This mixture will be used entirely in a batch of dough and has the same fate as the bread dough you're mixing: you will bake it in the oven.

My favorite homemade naan recipe is made with basic bread ingredients (flour, water and yeast) plus a generous dollop of yogurt, egg and baking powder to make the bread extra soft and chewy. I also prefer to use touch of honey as a natural sweetener for the bread.

Yogurt: Plain Greek yogurt holds the naan dough together and ensures a tender texture. Make sure you get authentic Greek yogurt and not Greek-style yogurt.

As such, you should avoid filling up on naan if you're watching your saturated fat intake. Moreover, store-bought plain naan has a relatively high sodium content, accounting for around 18% of the DV. Eating too much sodium may increase blood pressure and your risk for heart disease and stroke ( 7 ).

So don't leave your dough in a warm oven, on a radiator or in sunlight. It will likely be too warm and will dry out your dough too. Instead, find a cosy spot, with no drafts, for your dough to rise. And, if your sourdough starter is struggling to get going, consider finding it a warmer spot too.

You'll find I use honey in many of my recipes. I love to use it in my no-knead 100% whole wheat sourdough bread because it makes it much softer and less dense than it would be without it. Subbing it in recipes that call for sugar is not usually as simple as a one-to-one sub, though.

Use Starter Later: Use starter after its peak. It will have risen, doubled in size and is starting to fall back down. The yeast are still active at this stage but more bacteria are present, and the starter smells much more acidic. A larger amount of bacteria will develop resulting in more sour flavored bread.

Step 3: Cover and let the dough rise for 10-12 hours. This is called bulk rise or bulk fermentation. Step 4: After 10-12 hours, the dough should be doubled (or even tripled) in size. Many recipes will tell you the dough is over-proofed if it triples in size but I find that it makes deliciously fluffy bread this way!