10.09.2003

Mmmmm - Pitas

I used a pretty standard recipe and rushed them a lot to get 'em done in time for dinner and they still turned out well. Lots of room for improvement. Below is the recipe I used (and some suggestions for things I'd change).

Pita Breads
Machine kneeded dough. Add to the pan in this order:
water, 200 g (room temp)
yeast, 1 t (Fleischmann's bread machine)
honey, 20 g (1 T)
olive oil, ca. 12 g (1 T)
all purpose flour, 250 g (I used Gold Medal this time, I'm using Pillsbury in the future)
wheat/rye flour, 50 g (1:1 w/w)
salt, 5 g (1 t)

Machine kneed (30 min), 1st rise 60 minutes (this is a restatement of the dough cycle in my machine). The dough was divided in 6 pieces (ca. 100 g each) and each piece was rounded.* They were allowed to rise a second time beneath a moistened flour sack towel on the counter top for 15 minutes. The oven was preheated to 425-deg-F. As you all know, an oven can never be preheated too much. Two cookie sheets were covered with a piece of parchment paper and each of the dough blobs was squished into a squat disc. These discs were allowed to rest again for 10 minutes (didn't bother to cover them). The squat discs were then squashed into little pizza shells (using liberal amounts of flour to prevent sticking), ca. 6" diameter. These little pizzas were arranged on the sheets of parchment and allowed to rest beneath the moistened towel. I let them rest for 10 minutes but would give them at least 20 minutes next time. The sheets were launched into the 425-deg-F oven (lower third rack) using a quick shot of steam (from spraying the oven walls with a high powered squirt gun). They cooked about 15 minutes (and plumped like blowfish), until they were slighly browned. I repeated with the second sheet. The second sheet puffed up better (they rested longer). I removed them and let them rest in the basket pictured until dinner. We ate 'em with hummus. The next day they still tasted pretty good.

*Rounding and related procedures are described in the pizza piece, here.