Pita Bread

Hello food lovers!  I'm back!  I am so sorry i was away for so long, but good news!  I successfully defended my dissertation last month, so that's a wonderful victory.  And about two weeks ago, I married the man of my dreams!  We now live in a darling apartment and enjoying city life together :)

Our new kitchen is small in size but has considerable counter space and storage, so I'm happy!  I had been itching to bake something, but also wanted to keep things on the healthier side (I love making desserts, but I don't like eating them and Mr. SSUR likes eating them a little too much).  So i decided to try my hand at making pita bread from scratch!

The recipe comes from the New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, and my mother-in-law got us this book as a housewarming gift.  It's so neat because it has handwritten recipes that are easy to understand.  I love it!

Anyway, I was excited about this recipe because it requires dough work, which means I get to use a lot of my new tools and gadgets in the kitchen.  So let's begin!

Ingredients (makes 6 big pitas):
-1 cup warm water
-1 1/2 tsp yeast (1/2 packet)
-1 tbsp honey
-1 tsp salt
-3 1/2 cups flour
-a few drizzles of oil

1)  Put water and yeast in a bowl and let stand 5 minutes.  This is the kind of yeast I decided to get.  I think i am feeling optimistic about the amount of yeasty baking I'm gonna do.  It expires in over a year, so let's see if I can get thru the whole jar :)

Adding the yeast to the water!

2)  Once the yeast water has sat for a few minutes, add honey.  You can use sugar too, but I like the taste of honey for things like this that are gonna be eaten with savory foods.  I don't know, it's probably psychological.

Adding salt to the mix as well...then whisk it till it's all dissolved.

3)  Using a wooden spoon or paddle setting on your mixer, add 3 cups of flour one cup at a time.  Here it is after 2 cups...

And after 3 cups...

You might need to switch to the dough hook after the last cup.

4)  Scrape dough out of the bowl with a wooden spoony spoon.

The dough should be firm enough to just hold in your hand like this.

It's a pretty firm dough.  Really, 1 cup of water was all the liquid it got, since the dough doesn't use eggs or oil.  Knead it for 5-10 minutes, then let sit in oiled bowl (oil the top of the dough too).  Cover it with a warm, damp cloth and leave in a warm spot for about an hour.

6)  Once the dough has risen, set it on a floured surface and knead for a few minutes to punch out the air bubbles.  Separate into 6 small balls of dough, and knead each one and roll out into thin (1/8") flat circles.

The fun part is, we got these dough planners from our friends Michael and Eileen for our shower back in January, and these are awesome.

You wrap them around your rolling pin so it raises the pin exactly 1/8", allowing for perfect height.  Cuz let's face it, i never ever ever get the dough all the same thickness. 

Er, shut up.  That was my first one and it looks like a square with rounded corners.  The others looked better.  

7) Let circles rest on floured counter for about 30 minutes.

8) Preheat oven to 500F.  Place circles on a greased and floured baking tray.  I used a silicon baking mat, so i didn't have to do that, but I imagine you would want to make sure these slip right off the tray.  Bake for 6-8 minutes or until slightly brown on top.  Let me show you some magical pictures.

I love watching things in progress...I look into ovens once every few minutes (don't worry, i use the light, i'm not letting any heat out) and love watching things bake.  Haha when I was a kid, I would open the washing machine while it was going, stick my finger into the groove that makes the machine think the lid is on, and watch the clothes swish back and forth, then spin dry.  I also can't leave plants alone because I keep poking and prodding them trying to watch the changes as they grow (which ultimately ends up killing the poor seedlings).  Anyways, look at these:

This made me squeal, i was so excited.  Look at that poof!

Out of the oven!  I like things that take very little time to bake :)

9) Now this is important: wrap the stack of hot pitas in a clean moist towel and place in a paper bag and seal it.  Let sit like that for 15 minutes.

I only had a Starbucks bag handy.  And a binder clip.  Haha.

This process keeps the pitas from hardening up.

Okay, so check it out!  This is one of the little half-size ones I made for taste-testing.  I ate one, and my friend Stu who came over to drop off his keys got another.  Yum!

And here's a trick I've learned over the years from my superstar culinary friend, Dani.  She saves bags  from loaves of bread and uses that to store home-baked goodies!  I happened to have this bag from hamburger buns, so I stored the pitas in there.  Excellent!

Yay!  Thanks for reading, and thanks for all your patience waiting for me to come back!  Up next: an easy chickpea salad that goes reallllly well with the pitas we just made today.  Stay tuned!


For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.