My youngest really likes bread, and pita is one of his favorites, so guess what? Yeah, I had to give it a shot. They’re easy to make and fun to watch bake, since they really puff up in the oven (I like to press them down afterward — more practical for storage).
If you try this recipe and it doesn’t puff, your oven isn’t hot enough, or you didn’t let your baking steel or pizza stone preheat long enough to fully absorb the heat. It’s all about blasting a ton of heat rapidly.
(Experiment 146) Pita
Ingredients
- 2 g active dry yeast
- 250 g bread or tipo00 flour
- 6 g 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.
Notes
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.