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Pita bread is a very versatile, useful yeasted flatbread made in the Near East. It is made with a moderately wet dough, 63%, and rises for a relitively short time. I scale my pitas at 3 1/2 ounces / 100 grams. A pita may or may not puff up to form a pocket; there are good examples of both styles. The pocketless pita is used as a wrap-around for a sort of sandwich or as an accompaniment to a main course. The pocket pita is usually split and stuffed with food and is more familiar. That's what I'm making here. Pita is good for cookouts, too, as you can put barbequed meat and vegetables in it and have a handy meal. You can cut pitas into wedges and toast them to make tasty, healthy dip chips.

One of my favorite pita sandwiches is made by splitting a pita and putting in sliced tomato, a bit of lettuce and a little mayonnaise. This is hard to beat for a quick lunch on a hot summer day. Adding a bit of cheese makes it even better. Another is a pita BLT, bacon, lettuce and tomato. Don't laugh if you haven't tried it.

You can also split the pita into two disks and use them as a base for a toasted sandwich or a flat apetizer akin to the Armenian lahmajoon, a tasty disk of bread covered with a thin layer of spiced lamb and broiled. Another alternative is to make a real lahmojoon from scratch and bake the bread while the meat cooks.

This is a wonderful bread to make with children. It's simple, it doesn't take a lot of time and rolling out the dough is a lot of fun. The pay-off is watching through the oven glass as the pitas bake. They will sit on the stones for a bit, then, POOF! They puff up like a balloon. Watch out for the hot oven and tiles, though.

The trick to making them puff and form a pocket is to

Roll the dough thin.
Have a moderately wet dough -- 63% works well for me. You may find that your technique and kitchen require an even higher hydration, maybe as high as 67%.
Bake for a short time, I use 3 - 4 minutes, on a tile or stone at a high heat -- I use 500F / 260C, although I have had success baking at both 500F and 550F.
If you want a crispier pita, bake a longer time, up to 6 or 7 minutes, but watch for burning.
You can also bake at a lower temperature, say 450F / 230C and get a chewier, softer pita.
The bottom line on this recipe is that it is very foregiving and adaptable -- you can get the pitas to turn out any way you want them to.

I used a poolish that I had made the night before. You don't have to use a pre-ferment, the recipe does well if made as a straight dough.

Total Ingredients

Ingred	Ounces	Grams
Bread Flour	26	740
Water	16 1/2	470
Dry Yeast	1/2	14	2 packets
Sugar	1/2 tsp	3
Salt	2 tsp	10

If anyone says that this recipe isn't authentic, they should think again. I translated it from the original Greek while standing in the cookbook section of a Greek store. I'm pretty sure I got things right, because the pitas always turn out well and taste great.

Although I specify a bread flour for this recipe, I've made the pitas with all purpose flour and they turned out fine.

Poolish

Ingred	Ounces	Grams
Bread Flour	10	285
Water	10	285
Dry Yeast	1/4 tsp	1

For instructions on how to make a poolish, click here make a poolish

I let my poolish develop for at least 4 hours and up to 6 hours.

Because I used a poolish of 10 ounces / 285 grams each water and Harvest King and 1/4 teaspoon / 1 gram yeast, I cut the yeast to 1 Tablespoon / 10 grams.

Ingredients to add to the Poolish

Ingred	Ounces	Grams
Bread Flour	16	455
Water	6 1/2	185
Dry Yeast	1 Tbsp	10
Sugar	1/2 tsp	3
Salt	2 tsp	10

Method

Mix for a minute or two, rest for 20 minutes and knead for 6 minutes.
The fermentation is fairly short, 45 minutes. Even with this fairly short fermentation the dough may double.
Scale at 3 ounces / 85 grams.
One trick I use is to pat and pull the pitas out about halfway to the proper diameter. This seems to help the pita form a pocket and will lessen the tendency for the dough to resist rolling out, which will reduce the amount of flour you will need.
Roll out on a floured surface until the pitas are very thin.
Because I am rolling out the pitas and they have a fairly high hydration, I use bench flour, which is a rare thing for me.
You can then bake at once or rise for up to 40 minutes. I've done it both ways and there isn't much difference.
Bake a few at a time on the stones. They will bake in about 3 minutes, although you can go as long as 4 with no harm.
I like a softer pita, so I usually bake for 3 minutes; if you like a crisp pita, go to 3 1/2 minutes or even more, but watch for signs of burning on the bottom.
When you put the pitas on the tiles or stone, you can put them either side up -- in other words, if you have given the pitas a bit of a rise, one side will have been exposed to the air and the other will have been down on the counter.
Try baking pitas with either side up and see if it makes a difference in your kitchen. In other words, to flip or not to flip, that is the question. They seem to balloon better with the damper side down.
Because I bake for a softer pita and bake a slightly shorter time, I sometimes don't get full puff. The pitas will still separate, they just don't balloon up.