Pita Bread
Ingredients:
2 2/3 flour (or 1 1/3 wheat flour and 1 1/3 cup regular flour)
2 1/4 teaspoons rapid rise yeast
1 1/3 cups ice water
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 teaspoons honey
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
Instructions:
1. Whisk flour and yeast together in a bowl of stand mixer. If you don't have a stand mixer, then mix flour and yeast together in a bowl.
2. Add ice water, oil, and honey on top of flour.
3. Fit stand with dough hook and mix on low speed - 1 to 2 minutes. No stand mixer - knead with hands for 4 minutes on lightly floured surface.
4. Let dough stand for 10 minutes.
5. Add salt to dough and mix on medium speed until dough forms satiny, sticky ball that clears sides of bowl, 6-8 minutes. Without stand mixer - knead for 10-15 minutes with hands.
6. Remove dough from stand mixer to a lightly oiled counter and knead by hand for 1 minute.
7. Shape dough into 8 equal smooth balls.
8. Transfer the dough pieces to a rimmed baking sheet.
9. Lightly spray the dough pieces with oil spray.
10. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator for 16-24 hours.
11. Set oven rack to lowest level. Place baking stone on rack. Heat oven to 425. If you don't have a baking stone, place an inverted rimmed baking sheet on the lowest rack and cover with parchment paper.
12. Remove dough from refrigerator.
13. Coat the 1st dough ball with flour.
14. Pull the edges/sides of the dough ball up to the top. Hold the ball in your hands and pinch the seams together at the top to seal.
14. On well floured counter, place the dough ball seam side down.
(I suggest flattening out the dough balls on a well floured piece of parchment paper - when the dough balls are flattened, place the parchment paper with the two dough circles on it on the baking stone).
15. Flatten out to five inch circle with hands.
16. Using rolling pin, gently press into a seven inch circle.
17. Repeat with 2nd dough ball.
18. Using a pizza peel (or in my case parchment paper), slide the dough rounds onto the baking stone. Cooking for 1-3 minutes.
19. Using a pizza peel (or in my case a large wooden spatula), flip the pitas over and let cook another minute.
20. Remove pitas from oven and let cool.
21. Repeat steps 13-20 for the next 3 sets of dough balls.
22. Enjoy.
Mark's Notes.
Where to begin with this one. I saw this recipe in Cook's Illustrated. Thought it looked simple enough. My wife likes pita bread. So, I thought I'd try it. There were so many things that went wrong.
1. My stand mixer wasn't properly mixing the dough with the dough hook. I had to knead it by hand some as the stand mixer wasn't mixing everything.
2. I forgot to coat the dough balls in flour before flattening.
3. I didn't read the notes about pulling up the sides of the dough balls to pinch the seams at the top.
4. Flipping the dough circles was difficult without a pizza peel. I actually used a large wooden spatula and another fork to help flip it. I also used these to get these out of the oven.
5. The next day, I watched the Cook's Illustrated video on how to make these. Apparently, pita bread is supposed to "poof" in the oven. It should expand - a lot in the oven. I never saw this happen.
I didn't know pita bread was supposed to "poof" like that. If it doesn't poof, it'll still be quite good. Just not quite as fluffy.
So, I'll have to try again.
Anyway, it was quite good. I had one kid who put butter on it. My wife tried it plain. My other kid saved it for the morning, scrambled some eggs, put some vegetables in it, put it all in the pita bread. She said that was really good.
So, enjoy. Hopefully, your pita bread will turn out better than mine. If and when I try again I'll update this with my notes and instructions. So, remember - Jesus loves you.
