Arabic Bread - Pita

Pita is a typical bread from Middle East, South Mediterranean and Balkan.  
Pita is a round flat bread that is puffed up and the layers remain separated, creating kind of a pocket inside. This effect is produced by the particular baking at a high temperature. 
Originally this bread is baked in a special oven but it's possible to bake nice Pita bread even in an ordinary oven.
It is widely used in Arabic countries to scoop dips as Hummus, Baba Ghanouj or to wrap Kebabs or Shawarma. 
It is also nice to cut pita in two half-moons and fill them with what you like best!!!  
 
 
INGREDIENTS: 
Servings: 16 pieces

250g durum flour
250g all purpose flour
300 ml water
2 teaspoons salt
20g yeast (1.5 teaspoon dry yeast)




 

1. Sift both types of flour together into a big bowl. If you have only the all purpose flour, you may use only that one...

 
2. Add dry yeast and salt to the flour and mix. If you use soft fresh yeast, melt in in some warm water: warm, not hot.


 
3. Make a depression in the middle of the flour.
4. Add WARM water, first half of it and mix, then the other half and mix again.

5. Take the dough out of the bowl and knead the dough for about 10 minutes. 
Note: You need to knead the dough properly to take the gluten out of the flour, so that the dough would become more elastic .  

Note: Now I'll let you know how to knead the dough:
 
- Sprinkle some flour over the work surface and keep some more flour by side
- Take the dough out of the bowl
 


- Fold the dough one third and press over with the help of the heal of the hand (or both hands)

 


- Continue folding the dough and pressing with a round motion

 


- If at the beginning the dough was a bit sticky, after about 10 minutes it will become more elastic and firm, you will feel the difference yourself.
- You might need to add more flour while kneading the dough, don't worry to add some!  
 

6. Put the dough in the same bowl you mixed the ingredients in and cover with a plastic film.

7. Let the dough raise for about 2 hours in a warm environment without air drafts. By the end of this time you will have a double volume of the dough.



8. Sprinkle the work surface with some flour and take the raised dough out of the bowl.
9. Knead the dough again for about 5 minutes, it will reduce it's volume.

10. Divide the dough into halves and then each half into 8 parts. With this amount of dough you will have 16 Pita buns.

11. Roll out the dough into flat buns of about 12 cm round and 1cm thin. 
12. Sprinkle generously the work surface and place the rolled out buns one next to the other. Cover them with a clean cloth and let them raise for 1 hour.  

13. After one hour passed, heat up the oven to maximum. Put the empty oven tray into the oven and heat it up as well.

14. Cut a piece of oven paper suitable for the tray. 
15. Put the oven paper over the tray and carefully transfer the Pita bread to the tray, use as many as can get in (I baked 6 pitas at a time)

16. Bake your Pitas for about 6-7 minutes at 250C.
17. Keep baking Pitas till they are all baked. 
If you are going to serve them immediately transfer them to a nice dish and serve. 

  

 Here I served my Pita bread with the Arabic Mezze: Hummus and Baba Ghanouj. The recipes may be found HERE and HERE .

Enjoy!!!

This is how the Pita looks inside, guess what I put there? ;-)

 

Note: If you think to store Pitas, put them in a paper bread bag when they are still warm and then put the paper bag in a plastic one when the bread is cooled down. This way the bread will keep being soft and won't get dry....