One Dough 3-Ways (Pita)

No Puffed Pockets

Time: 4 Hours 20 minutes

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 3/5

In preparation for an upcoming gyro recipe, I decided to make some of the other ingredients from scratch instead of buying them from the store. Obviously, this analysis will be for the pitas from the Zaytinya Cookbook. I was always curious how pitas puff and become pockets, so hopefully I’ll be able to find out through this recipe.

Key Ingredients & Omissions:

As with most breads, the ingredients for this are pretty simple & easy to find. I suppose semolina flour might not be the most easy to recognize ingredient, but I think most of you wouldn’t have a very hard time finding it. No ingredients were left out.

Tools:

• Stand Mixer

• Rolling Pin

• Baking Stone

Cooking Review:

Yeast Mixture: 18 minutes

To start, I mixed the warm water (from the tap), milk, some of the flour, and yeast in a bowl. While it sat for 10 minutes, I mixed the rest of the dry ingredients in a bowl, excluding the semolina flour.

Mix Dough: 34 minutes

I added the yeast mixture to the stand mixer and mixed it with a dough hook on low speed, adding the flour mixture a tablespoon at a time until a shaggy dough formed, about 19 minutes. I did have to scrape the bowl down several times during this step. The olive oil was added slowly, next. The dough was kneaded for about 12 more minutes to come together and become smooth (in the stand mixer). I ended up having to add about a tablespoon more of water during the kneading.

Rise: 2 hours

I oiled the bowl of the stand mixer and rolled the dough in it to coat. I covered the bowl and let the dough rise for 2 hours.

Form Balls: 18 minutes

I punched down the dough and split it into 8 equal pieces. I rolled them between my hands to form balls. I oiled my hands with olive oil and coated the dough balls with oil before covering them for a few minutes to rest. The recipe doesn’t specify exactly how long to let them rest, so I just let them sit for  about 10 minutes.

Roll Out Dough & rest: 30 minutes

I sprinkled a baking sheet with the semolina flour and used a rolling pin to roll each ball into an oval about 9” long. After rolling each ball, I transferred it to the prepared baking sheet. I covered the sheet and put the baking stone in the oven to preheat.

Bake Pitas: 34 minutes

This is where the recipe earns its difficulty rating. Maybe it was a mistake I made in the previous step(s), but this is when I found out. None of my pitas really puffed to make a pocket. One partially puffed, but it was just a small bubble on the surface of the dough. I ended up baking each pita for just about 3-4 minutes before wrapping them in a towel to keep them warm. I’m really not sure why they didn’t puff. Maybe I didn’t roll them thin enough? Or maybe they were rolled too thin? In any case, it was pretty disappointing that I didn’t end up with any pockets.

Analysis:

Despite not getting any pita pockets, the bread still tasted pretty good. The texture was a little tougher/chewier than I may have liked, but it wasn’t terrible. The flavor was definitely there, though. I can confidently say that it’ll probably taste better than almost every pita you buy from the grocery store. Again, it’s hard to describe the flavor of a good bread, but it’s just more fresh and flavorful than what you get at the store. I’m giving this recipe a 6/10. There’s got to be something I’m missing (or the recipe isn’t telling me) about getting the pockets to puff. That’s kind of the pita’s main thing right? Other than that, it wasn’t pretty good.