Homemade Pita bread

Pita bread is not as common as tortilla bread in Scandinavia. This Mediterranean bread is perfect to fill with the ingredients you like the most. I love to bake my own pita bread because then I can get it very thin, but still as thick as it can keep the filling. In this recipe, I have bake the bread with all purpose flour, but you can of course use wheat flour of any gluten free flour.

Ingredients (15 breads):

• 2 tsp dry yeast
• 4-5 cups all purpose flour
• 2 cups water (98ºF)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp maple syrup

Use a stand mixer. Add yeast and 1 cup of the flour into the stand mixer bowl. Mix it and let it shorty rest. Add the salt, syrup and the lukewarm water into the bowl. Mix on low effect. Then add the flour one cup at a time. Don’t add more flour if your dough starts to get together and loosen from the sides. Then better saving the rest for the bread board and see if it will be needed then. Mix the dough in the stand mixer for at least 10 minutes until you have a smooth dough.

Place the dough on a baking board. Cut the dough in 15 equal sized pieces. Take each piece of dough and fold it with the help from your fingers to a ball. Place the 15 balls on a kitchen towel and place another towel over the dough balls. Let them rest under the towel for 10 minutes.

Use a roller. Have some flour on the roller and on the baking board. Roll out each ball to a flat circle with a diameter of 6”. Don’t make them too thin (you want your filling to stay inside later), but also, try to avoid making them too thick (∼ 0.15”). Place the 15 flatbreads back on the kitchen towel and make sure to cover all breads with a kitchen towel over the breads as well to avoid that the surface gets dry. Ferment for 1 1/2 hour (the long ferment time make them rise later in the oven).

Pre heat the oven to 500ºF (yes, it needs to be really hot). Cover your oven tray(s) with parchment paper. Now carefully bend over each bread from the kitchen towel to the parchment paper. The reason I recommend you to bend over the bread is because you don’t want to make a whole in the bread, which will make it impossible for the bread to rise and become a pita bread while baking. So be careful!

Bake the bread in the middle of the oven until the bread starts to open up and rise. Then open the oven and turn the bread around with a spatula. Let it bake another 2 minutes, before you take the pita breads out.

Keep the ready pita breads under kitchen towels to make sure they stay soft and don’t get hard on the outside.

Now, time to fill and serve your freshly baked pita breads! I usually cut off a corner to get my filling into the bread. This little bread piece can be perfect to serve with e.g. hummus. Or just eat as it is. 😉 You can also just cut an opening on one of the sides to get the filling into your pita bread.

You can fill your pita bread with my delicious falafel, meatballs, fried fish, quinoa burgers or whatever you find at home.

Smaklig måltid!