Pita bread recipe|Middle Eastern Pocket Bread|Greek Flat Bread

Pita bread is a 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.

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.
Bake for a short time on a tile or stone at a high heat -- I use 550F / 285C.

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

Total Ingredients

Ingred	Ounces	Grams
HK 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, he may be right. 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
HK 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

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
HK 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.
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.
You should pat the pitas out a bit before rolling them. This will lessen the tendency for the dough to resist rolling out, and 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. This 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.
I like a softer pita, so I usually bake closer to 2 1/2 minutes; if you like a crisp pita, go to 3 minutes or even more.
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.
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.