Awhile back, I stumbled upon a recipe on someone's blog (no idea whose or how I found it) for Pitas. I love using pitas for sandwiches or toasted as chips, but they are SO STINKING expensive that we rarely buy them (I think I've probably bought them twice in the past 5 years.) So I was definitely anxious to try this recipe. I must say, I couldn't be more pleased with them! They are delicious, easy, and very inexpensive to make. So far we've used them for breakfast sandwiches and lunchmeat sandwiches, but I'm sure that as I make them more that we will discover many other uses for them. So without further ado or proper credit, here is the recipe that I found.
Whole Wheat Pitas
Ingredients:
1.25-1.5 c. warm water
2 T. olive (or other) oil
1 Tbsp. honey (or you can use white sugar)
3 c. flour (I used 1.5 c. white, 1.5 c. wheat)
1.5 teas. salt
2 teas. yeast
Directions:
Add ingredients to you bread machine as directed in the manual. My machine has me add the wet ingredients first, and the dry ingredients next, with yeast following at the very end, so I rearranged the ingredients in the recipe in that order.) Run the dough cycle on the bread maker.
After the breadmaker has finished the dough cycle, the dough is ready to be shaped into balls. Take the dough out and divide it in half (2 parts) in half again (4 parts) and in half one last time (8 parts). Roll each part into a ball with your hands.
Cover with a damp towel and let them rest for about 20 minutes. While they are resting, preheat your oven to 400 degrees with the pans you are going to use in it. You want to put your pitas on a hot surface when you're ready to bake them.
After 20 minutes, roll out the balls on a lightly floured surface into circles about 1/8-1/4" thick.
Place pitas on the hot pan and bake for 5-10 minutes (just to be clear, the pans are ungreased) or until, they are very lightly browned. The pitas will puff up in the oven while baking.
Remove from oven and place on cooling racks. When cool, cut the circle in half, then use a sharp knife to slice open the pita halves to make them pockets. (Some of them you may not have to do this to because of the way they puffed up in the oven.) Conversely, you could use them whole, this just stretches them a little further.
Store in an airtight container and use within a few days (they did seem to mold quickly.) Next time if I wanted to keep them longer, I'd probably freeze them.
3 comments:
Michelle, I feel the same way...love pitas, hate the cost. I will have to try this out!! Thanks for sharing!!
My kids LOVE pita bread! We made it a lot before Second Son was born but haven't really since then. I should again. I recently purchased a plastic cutter so the kids could separate, shape and roll the dough all by themselves, but they haven't had a chance to use it yet.
I would try freezing the rolled discs and then thawing and baking them. I bet they'd taste better than freezing after baking. Or, if you cut them, season them a bit and bake them again for chips they'll last a bit longer than the pockets. At least, I'd guess they would. I think myrecipes.com has a recipe for baking pita pockets for chips.
That's awesome! I'm starting to maybe sorta kinda wish I had a bread maker.
But then I think I wouldn't use it enough to warrant having it.
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