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Lazy Cat Kitchen

A food blog with plant-based recipes from all over the world

Vegan naan bread

April 10, 2015 by Duncan - 32

bread, chilli, yeastgo to recipe

go to recipe

naan bread toppings

I’ve always loved naan bread. I remember we used to go to our local Indian Restaurant (in Australia) and my favourite part would be the hot naan straight from the oven.

Unfortunately, I never tried to make it myself because I always thought that it would require a proper tandoori oven. But after teaching myself to make decent enough pizza in a normal oven, I thought “Why should naan bread be any different?”

In fact, really, you can quite easily make proper naan bread even if you are vegan, and even if you don’t have a tandoori oven… The only catch: You have to cook it about 3 minutes longer. I think I can live with that!

In this recipe I have replaced milk with almond milk and natural yoghurt with coconut cream. The naans are coated with garlic-infused olive oil, parsley and chilli. A traditional Indian restaurant would use something like ghee, which is clarified butter.

The advantage of our approach is that not only is it 100% vegan, but a LOT healthier. In fact, ghee is so fattening that you put on a pound of weight just by looking at it. Fact!

This vegan naan bread recipe is best enjoyed straight of the oven with a nice curry (coming soon), some good friends and some cold lager.

PS: If you make our vegan naan bread, don’t forget to tag us on Instagram as @lazycatkitchen and use the #lazycatkitchen hashtag. I love seeing your takes on my recipes!

decorating naan bread

ready naan breads

naan bread with curry

naan bread curry

4.75 from 4 votes
Print
  • makes: 6
  • prep: 2 hours
  • cooking: 6 min

Ingredients


BREAD

  • 450 g of strong flour
  • 7 g sachet fast-action dried yeast
  • 150 ml of almond milk
  • 150 ml of coconut cream*
  • 2 tsp brown sugar
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp olive oil + extra for bread glazing and pan glazing

TOPPING

  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely diced
  • handful of parsley, finely chopped
  • 2 tsp of mild chilli flakes
  • sprinkle of sea salt

Method

BREAD

  1. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl.
  2. Pour in the lukewarm almond milk, coconut cream (at room temperature) and olive oil. Stir everything together with a large wooden spoon.
  3. When the mixture has mostly stuck together turn the mixture out on to a work surface or bread board.
  4. Knead the mixture by holding one end of the dough in one hand and stretching it out with the other hand. Reform the dough, turn it 90 degrees and start again. Repeat this for 10 minutes (see photo below).

bread kneading

  1. When the dough is shiny and smooth, put it in a large mixing bowl, coat it in a thin layer of olive oil and cover the bowl with a tea towel.
  2. Leave this in a warm place (but not too warm – ie not next to an open fire!) for between one and two hours (until it has doubled in size).
  3. Place a greased baking tray in the oven and heat to 250° C / 480° F.
  4. Empty the dough out on to a work surface and push the air out with your fingertips.
  5. Cut the dough into 6 even pieces and roll each piece into a rough ball. Roll out each ball with a rolling pin until it is about half a centimetre thick (see photo below).

shaping naan bread

  1. When the oven is hot, take the baking tray out and place 2 rolled-out naans (or as many that will fit) on the baking tray and immediately put in the oven.
  2. Cook for 6-7 minutes or until the naans are golden brown.

TOPPING

  1. Warm up olive oil in a pan.
  2. Put diced garlic into the warm oil and fry it off very gently (on a low heat & stirring frequently) until the smell of raw garlic is gone.
  3. Apply garlic infused oil to baked naan breads with a brush. Sprinkle them with a bit of parsley, chilli and salt. Serve warm.

Notes

* You can either buy 100% coconut cream (not milk) or you can refrigerate can of full fat (that’s important) coconut milk for at least 24 hours. Carefully take it out of the fridge – be sure not to move or shake the can. Open it and your should see a layer of coconut cream rise to the top – carefully scoop it out with a spoon and set aside to bring to room temperature before using in the recipe as fridge cold cream will kill the yeast. Keep the watery part too, you can use it in smoothies or curries.

If you want more info on some of the ingredients that we use in our recipes, check out our glossary.
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South Indian coconut curry
coconut curry served

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This recipe has been written by Duncan. He is the "technical nerd" and baking department of Lazy Cat Kitchen. You can read about his journey into food blogging here, his other passion running here. You can also find him on Twitter.

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    Comments

    Leave a comment

  1. michelle @ Boards&knives says

    April 10, 2015 at 10:11 pm

    Beautiful looking recipe and photos! I love naan bread.

    Reply
    • Ania says

      April 11, 2015 at 10:25 am

      Thank you so much, Michelle.

      Reply
  2. Jess says

    April 12, 2015 at 6:02 am

    Yum going to give these a try next time I have my vegan friend around for dinner!

    Reply
    • Ania says

      April 12, 2015 at 12:08 pm

      Thanks, Jess. Please do – hope you and your friend like them.

      Reply
  3. Dawn @ Words Of Deliciousness says

    April 12, 2015 at 5:14 pm

    I love your naan recipe, nice and healthy. Your pictures are beautiful. Very delicious.

    Reply
    • Ania says

      April 12, 2015 at 5:24 pm

      Thank you so much, Dawn. Yes, naan bread gets bad rep sometimes, but there are certainly ways to make it less unhealthy and still super tasty:)

      Reply
  4. Dawn says

    April 13, 2015 at 12:25 am

    Mm….I love naan! It reminds me of all the dinners with my dad on our “father daughter date nights” when we would choose an ethnic restaurant to dine at and we would almost always end up at an Indian restaurant. He is gone now, but every time I see naan bread it brings back such wonderful memories of him. Can’t wait to try this!

    Reply
    • Ania says

      April 13, 2015 at 11:55 am

      Thank you Dawn, I’m glad that this recipe brought back nice childhood memories. I wish we had naan bread in Poland when I was growing up:)

      Reply
  5. hanna says

    February 10, 2016 at 9:14 pm

    hello Ania
    I tried this recipies
    they are great! i loved
    thank you very much

    Hanna

    Reply
    • Ania says

      February 10, 2016 at 10:26 pm

      My pleasure:) So glad to hear that!

      Ania

      Reply
  6. Anna says

    March 25, 2016 at 6:04 pm

    Hello . Pleased to know your interesting blog . I look forward to try your naan bread and i would like to ask to you If you ever use tangzhong method for baking , i love so much for fluffy bread. Many greetings from Italy.

    Reply
    • Ania says

      March 25, 2016 at 6:17 pm

      Hi Anna,

      Many thanks for your lovely comment and if you do make our naan bread, we would love to hear how you got on. No, we’ve never tried tangzhong method but you got us intrigued, we will research it for sure. Thanks so much for new inspiration!

      Ania

      Reply
  7. Anna says

    March 26, 2016 at 2:10 am

    Many thanks for your kind answer. Yes the water roux or tangzhong is very nice and easy to play with also in order to veganize lots of bread and brioche recipes. Btw i will explore your blog with pleasure.

    Reply
    • Ania says

      March 27, 2016 at 3:45 pm

      Fantastic, so nice to hear that you like the blog! x

      Reply
  8. Sheida Norouzi says

    April 17, 2016 at 2:54 am

    Looks so yummy! Can I use unsweetened almond milk?

    Reply
    • Duncan Edwards says

      April 17, 2016 at 11:27 am

      I’m glad you like it! Yes, unsweetened almond milk is what I used. Good luck!

      Reply
  9. Nancy says

    April 17, 2016 at 4:04 pm

    This looks so good! Is there a gluten free option? 😕

    Reply
    • Ania says

      April 18, 2016 at 2:47 pm

      Hi Nancy! No, I haven’t tried got one, I’m afraid. 🙁

      Reply
  10. Melanie says

    May 17, 2016 at 2:57 am

    Hi all! I’m new to the vegan cooking world, and I have just one question about your recipe! What is a possibility in terms of “strong flour?” I’m not familiar with what flours are considered a strong flour. I appreciate the help! I’m an Indian food nut so I am incredibly excited to try this recipe!

    Reply
    • Duncan Edwards says

      May 17, 2016 at 11:14 am

      Hi Melanie,

      Great to hear that you are excited! Strong flour (sometimes called bread flour) is flour with a higher protein content which helps to create more gluten and more rise in baked breads. It is a white flour but is different to all-purpose flour (which has a lower protein content)…You should be able to find it in a big supermarket. I hope that helps! Good luck!

      Cheers,

      Duncan (Baking Department)

      Reply
  11. Tiffany says

    June 6, 2016 at 12:45 am

    I made these the other week and although they smelt and tasted fantastic, my wholemeal flour meant that they came out rather ‘dense’ not fluffy like a regular naan. More like a pitta, I guess. Gutted. I also sneaked a bit of crushed smoked garlic into the dough – the flavour was amazing.

    Would you recommend just using plain flour, or maybe 50/50?

    Reply
    • Duncan Edwards says

      June 6, 2016 at 2:23 pm

      Hi Tiffany,

      Wholemeal flour is actually quite a different beast to white flour as it contains the bran (whereas white flour contains only the endosperm). To be honest, I’m surprised it came out as well as it did! My recommendation would be to use either “bread flour” or “strong flour” as it has the high protein count needed to make Naan properly.

      Cheers!

      Duncan (baking department and cat patter)

      Reply
  12. swapna says

    July 26, 2016 at 1:20 pm

    Hi
    what is strong flour referred in Australia

    Reply
    • Duncan Edwards says

      July 26, 2016 at 1:28 pm

      Hello,

      This little chart is very useful:

      • Cake and pastry flour = soft flour
      • All-purpose flour = plain flour
      • Bread flour = strong flour, hard flour
      • Self-raising flour = self-raising flour
      • Whole-wheat flour = wholemeal flour

      Cheers!

      Duncan

      Reply
  13. Ellie says

    October 22, 2016 at 9:41 pm

    Fab recipe, these turned out brilliantly, and were perfect with the pumpkin and coconut curry. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Ania says

      October 23, 2016 at 10:38 pm

      Thanks so much, Ellie! That’s brilliant to hear! 🙂

      Reply
  14. Guen says

    December 23, 2016 at 1:18 am

    Hlo! Thanks for the great recipe, we made some yesterday and they were delicious 😀 one find we had: if you bake them in a hot pan with some olive oil, they become even fluffier and softer for extra tastiness and curry absorption abilities. Naans are originally baked in a Tandoor grill – so the fast heat increase is essential to getting lots of oven spring. Cheers!

    Reply
    • Ania says

      December 23, 2016 at 12:43 pm

      Hey Guen,

      Glad to hear you liked the recipe. Nice idea to do it in a pan! Ania

      Reply
  15. Sam robins says

    March 29, 2017 at 9:20 pm

    Just made this with our lentil curry…so so good swapped the almond milk for oatly… as allergic to almonds. They tasted so good. Thank you

    Reply
    • Duncan says

      March 31, 2017 at 1:02 pm

      Brilliant news Sam! I’ll be adding a recipe for Peshwari naan soon… Watch this space!

      Reply
  16. Maria says

    August 18, 2018 at 12:05 pm

    What do you mean by “strong flour,” as I’ve seen this phrase used in several of your recipes?

    Reply
    • Ania says

      August 18, 2018 at 12:25 pm

      Strong flour is simply another term for bread flour. Hope that helps! Ania

      Reply

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Ania Marcinowska
Hi, I'm Ania. I love good food but I love animals more! Adopting a plant-based diet has been the best decision I've made and that's how this blog was born. It's a space where I want to show you that creating delicious plant-based food isn't actually hard at all.
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