Have you ever wondered about pita bread baking, and/or witnessed the bread's magical puff-up from flat round pancake to few inches high pita! If not, then pick up your sleeves, grab your rolling pin and get ready for pita baking experiment. No baking school or bread baking classes are needed to get this done...just you, hot oven, rolling pin and few pantry - available ingredients, and the results are: deliciously soft and pliable pocket bread. Here's what you need:
Ingredients:
- 3 Cups of all-purpose-flour.
- 1 Cup of warm water.
- 1 tbsp of olive oil.
- 1 tsp of salt.
- 2 tsp of granulated sugar.
- 1 1/2 tsp of bread instant dry yeast.
- In a large bowl of an electric mixer, lightly whisk1 cup of warm water, 1tbsp of olive oil, 1 tsp of salt, and 2 tsp of sugar.
- With dough hook fitted, add in 1 cup of all-purpose-flour + 1 1/2 tsp of instant dry yeast and beat in to make a batter. Add remaining 2 cups of flour and knead dough for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic. (add extra flour if needed during the kneading process, 1 tbsp at a time).
- Place dough in a large bowl, brush top with few drops of olive oil, cover and let rise in a warm place for about an hour.
- When doubled in size, lightly press onto dough to release air, transfer to floured worktop and cut into 8-10 equal pieces. (whatever serve your needs)
- Onto a floured worktop, form dough pieces into balls and roll each into 6 inch circle.
- Place rolled dough on lightly floured surface, cover lightly with a towel and let rest for 35 minutes. Try to maintain an equal thickness of rolled dough (about 1/4 inch thick, each) so as to help them puff. Heat oven to 500 F.
- When dough rounds are slightly puffed, place 2 at a time on top of wire rack, put rack in the middle of hot oven and bake for 5 minutes till lightly golden. When done, remove rack from oven and cover bread with damp towel to keep moist. Repeat the process with the remaining rounds and layer within damp towels, then let cool.
- Cut bread into halves, fill pockets with tuna salad, scrambled eggs, or chicken salad and serve.
Baker Note:
- Make sure your bread instant dry yeast is not expired so as to end up with satisfying results.
- In bread baking and pastry making, we often have recipes that call for use of salt and bread yeast, it is strongly recommended that salt and yeast are not combined together. Unlike sugar, salt has a retard affect on the growing activity of yeast, especially if the amount of salt used is not in-balance with the amount of bread yeast being used.
- Kneading the bread dough can be done manually (using your hands), electric mixer or dough machine.
- Store pita bread in plastic bag for couple of days, or freeze for longer period of storage.
- To use frozen pita, thaw, and slightly warm over medium heat.
