Bread Machine Pita Bread

The easiest way to knead dough is to have someone else do it for you. For this recipe I used a bread machine that typically spews out 1-lb loaves of squarely-shaped bread. Like most people reading/doing a recipe for the first time, things don't always come out in uniform shapes nor is the dough cut into equal-sized pieces. The flour used for this attempt is a mix between all-purpose unbleached flour and whole wheat all-purpose flour because I only have one container large enough to store 5+ lbs of flour and I bought whole wheat by accident the last time I was at the store. Anyhow...

A 500 degree F oven is very hot and was the perfect complement to the start of the rainy season in the NW. I was concerned that the dough wouldn't rise properly after it'd been cut and rolled out to form pita-like shapes (roundish) from the apparent humidity and cooler weather. The most awesome thing to see was the pitas being baked. They swelled up like little balloons in the oven. Taking them out was a challenge. Hot oven = hot pita bread. I'd advise against using tongs because they ripped through a few of the pitas. Only half way through the batch I realized that a metal spatula worked much better.

This is an average pita recipe which you can find just about anywhere on the Net. The bread machine not only kneads the dough, but provides a nice, warm enclosed space for the dough to rise properly. I also misread the original recipe and cut the dough into 12 pieces instead of 8. No wonder why I couldn't roll them out into 6" diameter circles.

Ingredients

1 1/8 c. warm water (110 degrees F)
3 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

1. Put all the ingredients into bread machine and select the Dough setting.

2. Once risen (in the machine), turn dough out onto a floured surface. Gently roll and stretch it into a 12" rope. Divide dough into equal pieces. Set aside to rise for 30 minutes or until puffy.

I used lightly floured parchment sheets for this step so that the pitas wouldn't stick together.

3. Preheat oven to 500 degrees F. Place a few pitas directly onto the oven rack and bake pitas for up to 5 minutes. If they turn golden brown, you've cooked them for too long.

4. Remove puffed up pitas from the oven and place in a large paper bag lined with a kitchen towel. Look, I don't know why this step works better than say, laying them out on a cooling rack, but it does.

5. Store pitas in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for up to a week; or store in freezer for 1-2 months.

These pair well with the baba ganoush recipe.

Pitas Baking in the Oven

Finished Pitas Cooling in a Paper Bag