Pita bread is a great bread for beginning bakers or for making with kids. The entire process of making them only takes about two hours too, so it is also a great one for people on a tight schedule.
Flat Breads
Flat breads can be made in dozens of different ways. They can be made from grains other than wheat, such as corn in corn tortillas. They can be made with no leavening, such as matzo or flour tortillas, with chemical leavening (baking soda or baking powder) such as pancakes or crepes, or with yeast, such as naan or pita bread. They can also be made from a starter. And they can be baked (pitas), fried (fry bread), grilled (zebra bread), and, I would imagine even steamed (I'm drawing a blank... anyone?). Flat breads of some sort exist in just about every culture on the globe.
Anyone who grew up in a household where flat breads are an essential part of every meal knows will attest that they are a hundred times better when baked fresh than when bought from the store wrapped in plastic and already two or three days old.
I wasn't brought up in such a house, actually, but a year or two ago I started going to a local Lebanese restaurant solely for the fresh pita bread that they baked. After draining my wallet by eating lunch there every day for a week, I realized pita bread must be pretty simple to make at home. So I tried it and was extremely pleased with the results. I still visit the Lebanese restaurant for their pitas every few weeks, but I've cut back and saved myself a ton of money.
About The Ingredients
There are only 6 ingredients in this recipe for pita bread, and you even have quite a bit of flexibility in choosing which of those to include. I'll go through the ingredients one-by-one:
- Flour - I like to use one cup of whole wheat flour and 2 cups of all purpose unbleached flour. It gives the pitas a heartier flavor than using all white flour. You can use any combination of the wheat flours you have around the house, from 100% white flour to 100% whole wheat flour. You could probably even use flour made from other grains, though I'd suggest trying it with wheat flour the first time before getting too crazy.
- Salt - Salt is necessary to retard the yeast (slow it down) and to flavor the bread. Without salt bread is pretty... blah. I used kosher salt for this, but any type of salt you have in the house will work just fine.
- Water - Plain old tap water, assuming your water is drinkable. If not, bottled or distilled water. Something close to room temperature (warmer than 50 degrees fahrenheit, cooler than 100 degrees) works best.
- Sugar - A touch of sugar or honey provides a little more food for the yeast and will make the bread brown faster when it caramelizes. It also can add a touch of sweetness to the dough. You can safely omit it from the recipe and it will turn out fine, or add more if you like it sweeter.
- Yeast- I use instant yeast, which is also know as Rapid Rise or Bread Machine yeast. Instant yeast is a little more potent than active dry yeast and can be mixed directly in with your dry ingredients and will have no problem waking up when the water is added. Active dry yeast works just as well as instant yeast, but requires being activated in a little bit of warm water before being added to the rest of the ingredients. If you are using active dry yeast, read the instructions on the package to figure out how to activate the yeast before adding it to this recipe and reduce the amount of water you add later in the recipe by the amount of water you proof the yeast in (i.e., if you activate the yeast in a half a cup of water only add 3/4 to 1 cup later).
- Oil - Oil or fats soften the bread and keep it fresher longer. Olive oil is the most traditional oil to use in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking, but if you do not have any you can use whatever you have in the house. And, in the worst case, you can even omit it.
Pita Bread
Makes 8 pitas
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon sugar or honey
1 packet yeast (or, if from bulk, 2 teaspoons yeast)
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups water, roughly at room temperature
2 tablespoons olive oil, vegetable oil, butter, or shortening
If you are using active dry yeast, follow the instructions on the packet to active it (see the note on yeast above). Otherwise, mix the yeast in with the flour, salt, and sugar. Add the olive oil and 1 1/4 cup water and stir together with a wooden spoon. All of the ingredients should form a ball. If some of the flour will not stick to the ball, add more water (I had to add an extra 1/4 cup).
Once all of the ingredients form a ball, place the ball on a work surface, such as a cutting board, and knead the dough for approximately 10 minutes (or until your hands get tired). If you are using an electric mixer, mix it at low speed for 10 minutes.
(The purpose of kneading is to thoroughly combine the ingredients and to break down the flour so that the dough will become stretchy and elastic and rise well in the oven. A simple hand kneading technique is to firmly press down on the dough with the palm of your hand, fold the dough in half toward you like you are closing an envelope, rotate the dough 90 degrees and then repeat these steps, but whatever technique you are comfortable using should work.)
When you are done kneading the dough, place it in a bowl that has been lightly coated with oil. I use canola spray oil, but you can also just pour a teaspoon of oil into the bowl and rub it around with your fingers. Form a ball out of the dough and place it into the bowl, rolling the ball of dough around in the bowl so that it has a light coat of oil on all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and set aside to rise until it has doubled in size, approximately 90 minutes.
When it has doubled in size, punch the dough down to release some of the trapped gases and divide it into 8 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, cover the balls with a damp kitchen towel, and let them rest for 20 minutes. This step allows the dough to relax so that it'll be easier to shape.
While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. If you have a baking stone, put it in the oven to preheat as well. If you do not have a baking stone, turn a cookie sheet upside down and place it on the middle rack of the oven while you are preheating the oven. This will be the surface on which you bake your pitas.
After the dough has relaxed for 20 minutes, spread a light coating of flour on a work surface and place one of the balls of dough there. Sprinkle a little bit of flour on top of the dough and use a rolling pin or your hands to stretch and flatten the dough. You should be able to roll it out to between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. If the dough does not stretch sufficiently you can cover it with the damp towel and let it rest 5 to 10 minutes before trying again.
If you have a spray bottle in the kitchen, spray a light mist of water onto your baking surface and close the oven for 30 seconds. Supposedly this step reduces the blistering on the outside of your pitas. I've skipped it many times in the past and still been pleased with my breads, so if you don't have a bottle handy it isn't a big deal.
Open the oven and place as many pitas as you can fit on the hot baking surface. They should be baked through and puffy after 3 minutes. If you want your pitas to be crispy and brown you can bake them for an additional 3 to 5 minutes, but it isn't necessary (in the batch pictured here I removed them at 3 minutes).
That's it. They should keep pretty well, but we almost always eat them as soon as they come out of the oven.
Yum!
If you have any tips on baking pitas or have a recipe you'd like to share, please add a comment below.
Comments
As per Chef John in his "Food Wishes dot com": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPiA69p4gqE I now bake my pita on top of my stove in a cast iron skillet or griddle.
It helps me conserve expensive propane since it is more efficient than baking in the oven and it also, in my opinion, yields a better pita. You can use a dry pan or brush with olive oil. Preheat the pan until hot and bake the pita until the first side is blistered and brown, then flip over to finish baking. About 3 minutes per side should be sufficient.
Most pitas will puff up, but either way they taste great.
I found that 1 1/4 cups of water was a bit much. The dough was too wet for me to knead properly, so I added about a fifth of a cup of flour. (I took my cup scoop, scooped some flour and added it until it looked like it would work). My dough could be wetter because I am using date honey to sweeten it, in the best of Mediterranean traditions.
Next time I'll try with 1 cup of water and slowly add if necessary.
I noticed no one had ever left a comment on this post and I've been using this recipe for about a year now with fantastic results! No one believed me in class the other day when i said i could make these from scratch, but i just made another batch (I think this is like the tenth time i've used this recipe) to bring in tomorrow with some homemade hummus! Yum! Thank you for the recipe that started my baking adventures!
Happy Baking!
Holly
Thank you for this post, I will try her again :)
I am making this as I write. I developed a yearning to add garlic to this recipe but resisted. Any comments on that?
This is still a great recipe. Pita breads are great fun to make, especially with kids.
Do you let the dough rest after you've rolled it out or can it go straight in to the oven?
Made these today, following the recipe. Used SAF Red Instant yeast and 1T honey. Flour was 284g of AP plus 142gs of fresh milled whole wheat made from Bob's Red Mill Red Wheat Berries.
Did not use all the water, stopped at 1 1/4 cups as fresh milled whole wheat flour does not soak up as much water as whole wheat from a bag. Should have reduced the water a little from what I did put in as I had to add back in perhaps 2 more teaspoons of AP when the knead started in the Kitchen-Aid as the dough seemed too wet. The little more flour fixed it right up.
I have had this problem with most other recipes as well; I think Canadian flour is a tad more naturally wet then most American flours. My brother, in Bristol U.K. has the same opinion about Canadian flour, FWIW.
In any event, let it rise for 2 hours, divided and shaped into 8 round pieces, covered with plastic; rested for 25 mins. Rolled out using a marble pin, then rested for 10 mins. I baked 4 at a time on parchment transferred with a wooden peel to a well pre-heated stone. Baked 5 minutes 1 side, 3 mins the other. All puffed up perfectly. Hand flipped and removed with a metal peel.
Cooled on racks for about 15 minutes, gently deflated then stored for a couple of hours prior to dinner (lamb souvlaki) in two Norpro Tortilla keepers. Texture was great, taste was too. Diameter was about 6.5". I might have preferred them to be closer to 8", though I am not sure I cold have rolled them out much thinner than I got them.
Looks to be a keeper recipe to me!
After watching Cooked on Netflix (I highly recommend it) and seeing the woman in Marakesh making pita, I was compelled to try it. Found your recipe - it is terrific. I tried 2 parts white/ 1 part whole wheat and it is just wonderful. So easy. Today I didn't have time to let it rise much, either, but didn't matter in the least. Thanks so much.
I followed a recipe very similar to yours, my pitta bread is made from strong bread and plain flour (which I guess is the same as all-purpose). Probably also very similar proportions though I do have problems with US cups... I like to be precise;-)
The issue with thickness: when I roll them out thinner (1/8 inch) they'll puff up beautifully in the oven and some even stay that way. The thicker ones (I dunno, maybe 2/3 inch) never swell up - BUT they're actually tastier and puff up when toasted. Go figure? Anyone had similar experience?
I've been using this recipe for years and it's so reliable and tasty. Thanks for putting it up!
Question: can the dough be refrigerated overnight during the first rise? I'm serving dinner to several friends tomorrow evening and I want to do as much ahead of time as possible.
My pita didn't poof well and the first one was a bit underdone at 3 min. So I raised the temperature to 450F and increased the time to 3:30. The other thing I did - which may be natural to most - was to roll each from the middle out and not to flip and roll on the other side of the dough. All the remaining pita (6) poofed completely and were done all the way through. I was baking them on a stone.
> and, I would imagine even steamed (I'm drawing a blank... anyone?).
"Baozi (Chinese: 包子), or bao, is a type of filled bun or bread-like (i.e. made with yeast) dumpling in various Chinese cuisines. There are many variations in fillings (meat or vegetarian) and preparations (usually steamed)." --Wikipedia
thanks for the pita recipe!! so far, all i've baked is pizza in my ooni 3, but i look forward to trying it soon.
The video for Indian flat bread is very helpful-it uses a metal pan on the stove to first cook the bread and then the puffing occurs when the bread is put directly on the electric coil of the burner. It works really well.
https://youtu.be/vwtelJNe7ls
I was taught by the late Shashi Raina to make pita in a cast iron pan. They could be raised, as in this recipe, or they could be flour water and salt kneaded and let rest for 15 min.
Golf size balls were rolled into disks, rested, The pan was quite hot, water dancing like a prepared pancake pan. The disk was fried on one side, no oil, till the tope looked dry.
Then it was turned. A bunched up slighly moist towel was used to pressure and spin the pita genlty. It made a covered ball at one end that was pushed againsed the pita and turned. This would seem to distribute the forming pockets or tear the oonnection of the surfaces. If the bubbling was incomplete, it was turned over after a minute or so and the same was done to the other side. Puffing was guaranteed.
The finished pitas were lpainted with ghee and piled under a towelYum.
I love that there's a photo for every step! Thank you!