Wondering how an Indian who has celiac disease would eat his food? Well, here is the answer!
Indian food has a lot of recipes that are naturally gluten-free. Personally, I don’t like too much spiciness in my food so the only Indian food I eat is butter chicken (and this one is naturally gluten-free :D). Although this, I always envied my friends that were eating their Indian food with this bread with an incredibly nice buttery smell. So I tried to give it a go and it turned out great!
Here I present to you my version of the Indian Naan Bread made gluten-free. The nice thing about this recipe is that you don’t need special equipment to prepare this bread. Also, the flour blend is simple and easy!
I would say the only ingredient that would be kind of difficult to get is the ghee. Lots of stores nowadays have it, but I the ones I have seen have gluten on them (read the labels!). You can make your own ghee at home (I’ll upload a recipe soon to help you with that), or you can use a mixture of butter + vegetable oil.
I’ll upload the step-by-step instructions and pictures soon 😉
Gluten-Free Naan Bread
Course: Lunch, DinnerCuisine: IndianDifficulty: Easy8
servings1
hour30
minutes20
minutesThis gluten-free naan bread will help you eat your Indian food like you should!
Ingredients
100 g cornstarch
75 g tapioca starch
75 g white rice flour
100 g brown rice flour
4 g xanthan gum
10 g instant yeast (2 tsp)
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
4 g salt (1/2 tsp kosher salt)
235 ml warm water (1 cup) (105-110ºF / 40-43ºC)
20 g honey
42 g melted ghee (3 tbsp)
Can be replaced with 28 g of melted unsalted butter (2 tbsp) + 1 tbsp of vegetable oil1/3 cup plain yogurt
Some more ghee or butter + olive oil mixture to fry the bread later (at least 3-4 tbsp of ghee or the same amount of butter and olive oil mixture)
Directions
- Start by mixing the water, yeast and honey and leave it there to bubble! If you see that foam is starting to form, it means that your yeast is active and ready to go (around 3-5 minutes).
- Homogenize the dry ingredients (flour, starches, salt, xanthan gum and cream of tartar) using a whisk. This is really important so the xanthan gum is well distributed.
- Now mix everything together!! Using a silicone spatula start mixing and scraping the borders until you can’t continue with it. Now it is time to knead the dough!
- Transfer the dough into a silicone mat and start kneading for around 10 minutes so everything is well mixed and homogenized. The dough will be kind of firm, but not sticky. If it sticks a bit, you can oil your hand a bit and everything will be ok.
- Give the dough a ball shape and transfer it to a previously oiled bowl and cover it with plastic film. Place it in a warm place with no air currents to rise. The dough should rise until it doubled its size.
(I preheat my oven to 120ºF (48ºC), turn it off, leave the door open for about a minute, and then I leave the dough inside with the oven light on until its ready) - Once it has doubled its size, transfer the dough to a silicone mat and cut it into 8 equal pieces. Cover them with a moist towel so they don’t dry up!
- Use a rolling pin to flatten each piece in the silicone mat giving them the classic rounded (or oval) shape of naan. Leave them with a thickness of about 0.5 to 1 cm.
- Place the rolled naan bread into a tray, cover them with plastic film and let them rise a bit more for about 30 minutes.
- Preheat a skillet (you can use an iron skillet to get a nicer browning) and melt around 2 tbsp of ghee (or 1tbsp of butter + 1 tbsp olive oil).
- Meanwhile, melt 2 tbsp of ghee (or melt 1 tbsp of butter and then add 1 tbsp of olive oil) and have a brush in handy.
- Start frying the naan in batches with high heat. You should start seeing that some of them develop air bubbles inside. That’s great!
- After 2 or 3 minutes depending on thew power of your heating, they should start to develop a nice brown colour (see the picture of how the browning is distributed). Brush the white side of the naan bread with the melted ghee (or butter mixture) and turn them over so they can start browning too.
- When both sides have a nice colour, take them out and pat them with papel towel to remove the excess of grease.
- Now enjoy while they are still warm! Or cover them up with a linen cloth so they remain warm until you eat!
Notes
- Please be careful when buying ghee, lots of brands have gluten when they should!
- If you don’t have ghee to fry the naan, you can use the butter + oil mixture that I wrote about. I would prefer to use olive oil since it has a higher smoking point than other vegetable oils (do not use extra virgin olive oil!).
