Manageability – Fast and Furious.
Making pita bread requires a lot of mixing, patience, kneading, waiting, then extreme heat and crackerjack timing. It’s a real roller coaster of a baking experience, but in the end you’ll be glad you did it. This Pita Bread from Delish is the perfect compliment to a classic gyro.
No big surprises with this recipe – it’s classic bread-making – but there is a lot of kneading. A full 7 minutes’ worth, which doesn’t sound like a lot but gets tiring. Get some Wham! playing and knead to the beat (“bake me up before you go-go”). Also, putting your oven on 500 degrees for an extended time feels like you’re about to set off a bomb in your kitchen, so you can wait a minute if you want. You don’t have to do it in step one. I used a cast iron skillet and baked my pitas one at a time, which was kinda fun, but a little stress-inducing. This would have been much easier with a clay oven, where you can just flop the dough inside, like in old-timey Greece. Aye, Georgios! Give-a me a pita!
Regardless, they came out perfectly baked. A little puffy, but you can just flatten them down with your hands. NBD. I recommend the Carlsbad Craving’s Greek Chicken as a filler. Yum yum.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 c. warm water
- 2 tsp. active dry yeast
- 1 tsp. granulated sugar
- 3 c. all-purpose flour, divided
- 1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil (like Steve Carell)
- 1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
DIRECTIONS
- Place a pizza stone or large cast iron skillet in your oven and preheat to 500°. In a large bowl, combine warm water, yeast, and sugar and stir until dissolved. Stir in ½ cup flour and let sit for 15 minutes, until mixture foams.
- Add oil, salt, and 2 cups flour (reserving ½ cup) and stir with a wooden spoon until a shaggy mass forms (oh no Scoob!). Dust a clean surface with some of reserved flour and knead until smooth and elastic, about 7 minutes, adding more of the reserved flour if the dough is too sticky. Dough should be soft and moist. (You can cover the dough and let rest 10 minutes if you need a rest from kneading.)
- Place dough in a clean large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Leave in a warm place until dough has doubled in size, about 1 hour.
- Lightly dust a clean surface with flour. Punch down dough and turn it out onto surface. Divide dough into 8 pieces and roll into balls. Cover with a towel or plastic wrap and let rest 10 minutes.
- Working one at a time, roll each round into a ¼”-thick circle about 8” wide, sprinkling dough with extra flour if it starts to stick.
- Working as quickly as possible, open your oven and place as many pitas that will fit on your skillet or stone without touching. Let bake until an air pocket balloons and the pita begins to brown 3 to 5 minutes. Repeat with remaining rounds. Hey, have fun with it.
- Cover baked pitas with a clean kitchen towel to keep warm.