12.14.2003

Honey Wheat Pitas

I love Trader Joe's, hell, I even considered working for them. But, their breads suck. I bought some of their wheat pitas the other day to accompany baba ghanoush I was making. By the time I made the baba, I couldn't stand to use the anemic looking little pitas sitting there, just drying up in the bag, so I made some. Used a pretty simple straight dough recipe and they were done in about a couple hours.

Honey-Whole Wheat Pitas
I used a bread machine for kneading and the first rise:
Charge to the bread machine in the following order:
water, 150 g
honey, 15 g
active dry yeast, 1 t
all purpose white flour, 175 g
whole wheat/rye flour (1:1 mixed), 50 g
olive oil, 15 g
salt, 5 g


1. Mix and knead, let rise 1 hour, preheat oven to 500F.
2. Divide dough into 4 pieces, round the dough balls and let rest 5 minutes.
3. Squash each dough ball, using a rolling pin if necessary, to a 7" disc.
4. Place discs on a piece of 15" square parchment and place the parchment on top of a cookie sheet.
5. Cover the rolled out pieces of dough with a moist muslin towel and let them rest about 15 minutes.
6. Place the sheet with the parchment and pitas in the oven in the lower third of the oven.
7. Let them bake until they puff and look like these in the picture.
8. Remove from oven and resist as long as you can.