We tested a few naan recipes and cooking methods and found that the fastest and tastiest recipe came from Madhur Jaffrey's "Indian Cooking." It includes a combination of yogurt, yeast, egg and baking powder to create a fluffy, elastic dough that rose in about an hour.

"You can't compare it to bread from a tandoor," said Jaffrey, who shares her recipes and food memories in her recent memoir "Climbing Mango Trees." "But I worked hard to develop a recipe to make a dough that is smooth and silky to make the bread stretchy and chewy, as it should be."

This naan recipe is adapted from Jaffrey's "Indian Cooking." If you would like a darker bread, place 3 to 4 inches from a heated broiler for 30 seconds after the bread is baked.

NAAN

• 2/3 cup hot milk

• 2 teaspoons extra-fine sugar

• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast

• 3 3/4 cups flour

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil plus more for bowl

• 2/3 cup plain yogurt, lightly beaten

• 1 large egg

• Melted butter, optional

Put milk in a bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of the sugar and all of the yeast. Stir to mix. Set aside until the yeast has dissolved and the mixture is frothy, 15-20 minutes.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a large bowl. Add the remaining 1 teaspoon of sugar, the yeast mixture, 2 tablespoons of the vegetable oil, the yogurt and the egg. Mix; form into a ball of dough.

Knead dough on a clean work surface until smooth and satiny, about 10 minutes. Form into a ball. Pour about 1/4 teaspoon of oil into a large bowl; roll the dough in it. Cover the bowl with a piece of plastic wrap; set aside in a warm, draft-free place until the dough has doubled in bulk, 1 hour.

Heat oven to 500 degrees. Heat a heavy baking tray (or an upside-down cast iron skillet) in the oven. Punch down the dough; knead it again. Divide into six balls. Keep five covered while you work with the sixth. Roll ball into a tear-shaped naan about 10 inches long and 5 inches wide.

Remove the hot baking tray from the oven; slap naan onto it. Put it immediately into the oven for 4 minutes. It should puff up. Keep the naan warm by wrapping it in a clean kitchen towel; repeat with remaining dough. Serve hot after brushing with melted butter, if you like.

Makes 6 large breads.

• Per serving: 377 calories, 17 percent of calories from fat, 7 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 40 mg cholesterol, 65 g carbohydrates, 12 g protein, 492 mg sodium, 2 g fiber

For families in India, making naan at home doesn't make a lot of sense. Every neighborhood has a great naan bakery.

Here, no such thing. So homemade does make sense. Crafting naan that rivals the crisp, delicate creations you get from real tandoor ovens, however, is another story.

Indian culinary authority Julie Sahni has worked out a Western-style-oven naan that comes close, and she offered some of the following tips.

• "Stop kneading as soon the dough comes together as a ball, as tempting as it may be to keep going," she said.

• Use fresh active yeast. "Too many people keep yeast too long."

• Buy a "high-gluten bread flour, like King Arthur."

• Experiment with a small portion of whole-grain flour in the recipe for extra texture and fiber.

• Use very little yeast, and let the flavor develop through time. Sahni's recipe recommends four hours, but she says, "sometimes I let my dough rise for four days."

• Create a mini tandoor using "two pizza stones, one on a rack above the other, or two bricks to radiate the heat."

• Individual loaves also cook up quickly and crisply on the hot metal tray of a toaster oven turned to its highest setting.

• Cooking naan on a hot barbecue grill offers the intense heat, smoky flavors and toasty crispness that a tandoor provides.

Sahni recommends eating naan as fresh from the oven as possible. "Like a baguette, naan starts dying almost as soon as it comes to life," she said.

The bread is traditionally eaten with the hands.

Eaters should tear off tortilla chip-size pieces with the right hand and use them to scoop up sauces, curries or pinch bits of meat and food in bite-size packages called nivalas.

• Pizza stone: Heat a pizza stone in the top third of your oven at its highest temperature. Slap loaves on hot stone and bake until puffed and slightly browned, about 5 minutes. Brush with butter.

• Grill: Place uncooked loaves directly over very hot coals until the loaf puffs up. Flip them with tongs so that both sides get slightly browned. Brush with butter.