Homemade Pita Bread

This homemade pita is really good, but I have to admit, I did add a flavor enhancer. It shouldn’t make much of a difference if you don’t have it, but if you have some sourdough starter lying around, I would put a little in. I adapted this recipe from Delish.com, many pita recipes are very similar to this one.

Ingredients

This recipe makes 4 pita bread, just double if you want 8.

1/2 cup warm water (around 90-110 F)

3/4 tsp instant yeast (or 1 tsp active dry yeast)

1 tsp sugar

1.5 cups of ap flour (I always use unbleached)

1 tsp of olive oil

3/4 tsp of salt

Optional 1/2 tsp of sourdough starter, room temperature

In your stand mixer bowl combine dry yeast, starter if you have any, warm water, 1/2 cup of the flour, and sugar. Mix and let stand for 15 minutes (it will be bubbly and foamy after). Then with the dough attachment add in the rest of the flour, olive oil and salt. Knead in the stand mixer for 7 minutes, you could also do this by hand. Put dough into a bowl, covered with a towel and let rise in a warm-ish spot for an hour.

About halfway through the dough rise (30 minutes), pre-heat your oven to the hottest temperature or 500F, put the oven rack in the lower 3rd of the oven, and if you have a baking stone put that in as well. I didn't have a baking stone so I used a cast iron skillet.

Cut the dough after its rise into 4 pieces, cover to let dough sit for 10 minutes on you bench. Then roll out the dough, about a 1/4 of an inch thickness and carefully put onto baking surface. It took me only 3 minutes to cook each one and I only cooked one at a time due to the size of my cast iron skillet. Keep covered with a tea towel so they keep warm. Fresh out of the oven the pita are crunchy, they soften up when cooled off and put into a zip loc bag to keep fresh.