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.
Here we go
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