January 19, 2016 - 7:28am
Eat A Pita
I love hummus and thought it was time to try my hand at pita. Using the recipe from serious eats, I met with great success. The formula called for more yeast than I like. I set the oven at a higher temperature (baked at 550 though I did not check the thermometer, I just baked shortly after it came up to temperature.
The pitas were very soft. Made six of them. Ate two fresh out of the oven. Just cut them up and dipped them in homemade hummus. It was a real treat.
I will try this with sourdough next and then with more whole grains. I may also try cooking on the stove top and see how that goes.
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Love how the light illuminated the inside! Pitas are easy and nearly instant gratification, but it's hard to not eat them as they come out from the oven. "Okay, one for the basket, one for me... one for the basket, two for me..."
Enjoy (past tense, surely)!
Cathy
The oven light was making the photograph impossible to take head on, but when I moved to the side, the phone camera finally was able to focus and I wound up with a pita lantern effect.
Good stuff.
beautiful pics. I have made pita a lot, but always seem to get an "uneven" expansion inside the dough leaving one side very thin and the other thicker. Did you have that problem? How thin did you roll them? I usually do about 1/8". I use a stone, oven maxed at 500 (though with convection may be 520), and it takes about 3-4 minutes with a flip halfway or so.
I've been trying for years to get pita to puff up like that. I've succeeded maybe once!
Homemade hummus is way better than storebought, too. My favorite stuffing for pita, though, is roasted (red/yellow) peppers.
Well done David.
First, I have only made these once -- so my advice and takeaways are quite worthless. Beginner's luck may have reared its blessed head.
I did not measure the thickness of the pita. I simply rolled them out, fairly aggressively, with a wooden rolling pin. I tried not to "pinch" the ends of the pita with the pin, like one would do when rolling out a pizza crust (which I have never done, but have read about). I kept rolling until they were about the right diameter. 1/4 inch seems very thick when I look at it on a tape measure. I don't think they were anywhere near that thickness. Next time I will take pictures of the rolled out dough.
I did not notice that one side baked up thicker than the other. I did not flip my pitas. However, I did follow the instructions and let them "proof" for 20 minutes and then baked them top side down. Because I just cut them up and dipped them in hummus, however, I can't say how great these would have been for stuffing the pocket and eating. Only that they were very soft and very pleasing to eat with the hummus.
I recommend pitas to parents who want to bake bread with their kids. The little ones love watching the pitas balloon into puff balls and then deflate as they cool. It is great fun. Yours are great looking pitas!
This was the last Pita ... by far the largest of the lot. The pocket worked well for egg salad and to my eye, it seemed evenly sized top to bottom.
