Pita Bread Baking

The girls have agreed that I should teach them how to bake a few different types of bread. Not that I am the most successful bread baker around...I have a loaf of rye bread refusing to rise as we speak.....Anyway,what got them all fired up was these pita breads I made the night before last. This is going to be so much fun,we get together every evening when Tarien comes home from work and then we make the dough,leave it to slow rise in the refrigerator for the second rise and pop it into the oven the next morning (which will be my job seeing as I am the early riser in the family ) ...and everybody gets to have warm,fresh,home baked bread every morning for a week....We have to be realistic here...by that time we all would be a little tired of baking bread every day,but at least my kids would (hopefully) have learned something about bread baking...

Pita Bread Recipe


Ingredients:

1 package of yeast, instant or quick rising is fine
1/2 cup warm water
3 cups all purpose flour
1  teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon  sugar
1 cup lukewarm water,make sure the water is not too hot and kills the yeast!


Preparation:

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup of warm water. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Let sit for 10-15 minutes until water is frothy.

Combine flour and salt in large bowl.

Make a small depression in the middle of flour and pour yeast water in depression.

Slowly add 1 cup of warm water, and stir with wooden spoon  until elastic.

Place dough on floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes. When the dough is no longer sticky and is smooth and elastic, it is ready.

Coat large bowl with vegetable oil and place dough in bowl. Turn dough upside down so all of the dough is coated.

                          Allow to sit in a warm place for about 3 hours, or until it has doubled in size.



  Once doubled, roll out in a rope, and pinch off 10-12 small pieces.(I did 8) Place balls on floured surface..

  Preheat oven to 500 deg F. at least an hour before baking and make sure rack is at the very bottom of oven. Be sure to also preheat your baking sheet.

    Place balls on floured surface..

Let sit covered for 10 minutes. 

Roll out each ball of dough with a rolling pin into circles. Each should be about 5-6 inches across and 1/4 inch thick.

N.B.  Spritz each circle with a bit of water,which would make them pouf up beautifully.

Bake each circle on a pre- heated baking tray smeared with olive oil  for 3 minutes until the bread puffs up. .

Because my circles were a little bigger than normal,I baked each one individually,which sounds like a lot of trouble but really wasn't as 3 minutes go by quickly and the results were SO worth the effort!

When you take these babies out of the oven...for the love of all that is Holy,do NOT stack them on top of each other.... Instead,be clever and put them on cooling racks covered with a cloth.

We cut ours in halves and filled it with a tuna mayonnaise filling with lots of lettuce...yum,mmm



                                                                         The End