Month number 2 of our Bread Bible Bake Along. This month is a fairly quick and easy Pita Bread. I love, love, love pita bread and hummus. The funny thing is, I’ve never tried to make it. Now I have no excuses because the homemade pita is sooo much better than store bought. The only thing I would change in the recipe is maybe add a bit more salt.
The dough is basically the same as Rose’s pizza dough, which is my go to dough for pizza, but she switches up the flour for the pita.
Everything gets combined in the mixer with the paddle attached first. Once everything is sort of combined, the dough hook goes on and it mixes for about 10 minutes. I have the Pro Line KitchenAid mixer and the mixer is not designed to go above speed 2 with the dough hook so I mixed the dough a bit longer than 10 minutes. Into a proofing container it goes and then into the refrigerator. I checked it every hour for the first 4 hours to see if it was rising like Rose said to do.
I couldn’t see much change in the dough after 4 hours. I left it in the refrigerator until the next day, about 24 hours later.
Next was to divide the dough into 8-12 pieces and roll into balls then flatten into a disc and let them sit for 20 minutes.
Mine look a little rough around the edges but I didn’t want to over work the dough. Then it’s time to roll the discs out to about 1/4″ thick. I think a few of mine were a little too thick though.
Rose gives a couple variations for cooking or baking the pita and I chose to try cooking them on my electric griddle. Really just for the hell of it. Most of my pieces puffed like they were supposed to but a couple were not playing nice. I think those were the ones that were a little too thick. It was pretty cool to see the dough suddenly puff up.
So that’s it! Easy and very good, except needing more salt. I made some roasted red pepper hummus and actually couldn’t stop eating it and the pita. I will definitely make this again and be a little more careful with my rolling. To me there is something just so satisfying about making your own bread. The thrill of watching the dough rise and do its thing never gets old.
Next month will be the Touch of Grace Biscuits. What’s not too love about those? If you’re a bread fanatic, I highly recommend getting Rose’s book The Bread Bible.