My youngest really like bread and pita is one of his favorite so guess what? Yea I had to give it a shot. They are easy to make and fun to watch bake as they really puff in the oven ( I like to press them down, more practical)If you do this recipe and it doesn’t puff, your oven is not hot enough or you didn’t let your baking steel/pizza stone long enough to fully preheat and absorb heat. It’s all about blasting a ton of heat rapidly.
You need
- 2g active dry yeast
- 250g bread or tipo00 flour
- 6g salt
- 1 cup lukewarm water ( about 95F)
Instructions
- In a stand mixer bowl, combine the flour, salt and yeast, give it a little stir. Add the water and mix for about 4 minutes at medium speed.
- Remove the dough from the bowl. Oil the bowl and put back the dough in, cover with plastic film. Let it rest until it doubles in size, about 90 minutes.
- Dump the dough, cut it into about 8 pieces, and roll them into a ball. An easy way to do this is using 1 hand, make a “C” or tiger claw and put it over the dough, and start doing a circular motion. Within 15 seconds you will start having a nice ball. Repeat for all the pieces. Let it rest for 20 minutes.
- While waiting, crank your oven to 475F. If you have a baking steel or pizza stone, please use it, if you don’t have one, you can put a cast iron pan in the oven so it smoking hot when you will dump the pita on it.
- It’s now time to press down our ball and shape them. I like to use my hand and press them down before using the rolling pin. Once they are a little flat, use the rolling pin and bring them to about 7-8 inches in diameter. Note that you don’t want to have them thin as a piece of paper here, target about 1/8″.
I’m using baking steel and I cooked them for about 2 minutes on each side.
Store in an airtight container or freeze them. I find that after a day they aren’t as good so I just freeze most of them once cooled.