Have you heard of NAAN bread (rhymes with pawn)? It's a favorite at our house. Wikipedia says naan is a leavened, oven-baked flatbread found in the cuisines of West, Central, and South Asia. It's thought to have originated in India since the Tandoor oven in which it is made originated there. With various migrations of people, it eventually spread to other parts of West Asia.

Generally, it resembles pita and, like pita bread, is usually leavened with yeast or bread starter. Naan is also prepared unleavened, but the type we find in our local grocery stores is mostly leavened. Today's recipes sometimes substitute baking powder for the yeast. And milk or yogurt sometimes replaces the water, which will yield a softer dough. (We get ours at Costco, but most bakery departments in local grocery stores carry it.)

For breakfast we like to toast the oblong pieces and then cover them in butter and honey or jam. I also like to toast it well and let it cool; in the process of cooling, the bread becomes a little hard and crunchy, like a thick cracker. These naan "crackers" make a delicious accompaniment to soup, chowder, and stew.

We also like creating an open-faced omelet-type breakfast with naan. We cover pieces with shredded cheese and chopped mushrooms, bell peppers, green onions, maybe some fresh baby spinach and crack an egg over it all. We bake these in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes or until the eggs set up the way we like 'em. Fast, delicious, and fun.

Another thing we do with naan bread is create a topless toasted cheese sandwich. No rocket science here-it's just a piece of naan with lots of shredded Cheddar Cheese sprinkled thick all over and then toasted in our toaster oven. This is one of the best snacks ever!

But a use for naan that keeps showing up online (especially on Pinterest) is as the crust for individual homemade pizzas. For instance, take a look at this list of the different pizzas you can quickly come up with:

The BLT naan pizza. This is just naan bread covered with lots of cheese, cherry tomato slices, cooked chopped bacon and arugula. Top it off with fresh shredded Parmesan and you have a gourmet delight.

Then there's the traditional and popular Margherita pizza. Naan bread is covered with your favorite pizza sauce, lots of fresh basil leaves, maybe slices of cherry tomatoes, and plenty of fresh mozzarella cheese slices. Bake at 425 degrees until the cheese is nice and melty. Yum.

And one of our favorite ways to use all the crookneck and zucchini squash we wind up with during the summer is to create naan pizzas with them. We slather lots of alfredo sauce over the naan, cover this with thin slices of squash, then sprinkle it all with lots of Parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning. This is a family favorite.

I could go on, but you get the idea. The combinations are limited only to your imagination. The wonderful thing about naan is how versatile it is. So keep a package on hand for those days when you have no idea what to fix for a meal. Naan will open up a whole new world!