I have a perfectly fine recipe for pita bread, but when I came across this whole wheat bread machine version, I had to try it out.
Glad I did, ’cause it’s a keeper – and wicked simple to toss together.
Oh, yeh, I know, most of my bread halves don’t have the ‘pocket’ you would normally expect to find in pita bread. Well, tough; the bread is good, and, if you want a pocket, you can go grab a knife and cut one into the bread; oh, and, thanks to allrecipes.com.
INGREDIENTS
•1 tbsp olive oil
•1-14 cup water
•2-1/2 cup flour
•1/2 cup whole wheat flour*
•1 tsp salt
•1 tbsp sugar
•1-1/2 tsp yeast
*Or, just use three cups of regular flour.
Whisk the flours together with the salt and sugar in a bowl until nicely mixed.
This next bit depends on your bread machine; mine calls for adding wet first, then dry, and then yeast; if your machine tells you to do it differently, by all means follow those directions.
Add the water and olive oil to the pan in your bread machine, then add the flour mixture on top. Sprinkle the yeast over the flour, then close the machine and selct the ‘dough’ cycle.
Get on with your life until the machine beeps – no – not the beep asking if you want to add something to the dough – the beep telling you the dough is done.
And isn’t it pretty?
Transfer the dough to a floured surface (it’ll be a little sticky) and divide into eight pieces.
Roll each piece into a six or seven inch circle, then cover the whole shebang with a clean kitchen towel and set aside to rise for about 50 minutes.
While the dough is rising, heat your oven to 500º and slide your pizza stone in to get nicely hot.
Once the pitas have puffed up a bit – see the image to the right – arrange as many as will comfortably fit on your hot pizza stone and bake for four or five minutes, I went with four minutes, then flipped the pita over to toast the other side for another minute.
Remove the pitas from the oven and stash in a paper bag to cool.
Repeat the baking, turning, and tossing in the paper bag with the remaining bits of dough.
Note: after arrange the first batch on the pizza stone bare handed, I discovered that using my fish spatula to transfer the dough and flip the pitas worked much better; the large openings in the spatula didn’t allow the raw, slightly sticky dough to adhere, making transferring it onto the stone much simpler.
Once the bread has cooled, transfer to plastic zipper bags or a good bread box until needed.
I used some as a side at a dinner gathering, but really preferred using the rest, sliced and lightly toasted, for Bahn Mi sammiches.
Check out those tasty details, tomorrow. Tho’… you may want to stock up on rice vinegar and sesame oil. Just sayin’…