Homemade Pitta Bread

Whilst awaiting my food shopping to arrive I suddenly realised that I’d forgotten to order pitta bread, so out came the stand mixer and now we have homemade pitta bread and the wonderful smell of bread baking is filling the house.  Just like making my own hummus, when I bake pitta from scratch, I do wonder why I bother with the shop bought stuff – homemade is so much better and with the help of a food processor or stand mixer, they really aren’t hard work.

I’d really recommend using a pizza stone or other stone bake tray for these but even if you use a tin tray, it really needs to be pre-heated with the oven.

Ingredients:

20g fresh yeast

170ml warm water

1/2 teaspoon sugar

275g bread or plain flour (bread is best)

1 tablespoon olive oil

Small pinch of salt

Method:

1.  Mix the sugar, water and yeast together in a jug or cup and leave for a minute or two to activate the yeast.

2.  Put all the ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer with dough hook attached or into a food processor with dough attachment and mix on the low setting until all combined then turn up to high and let the machine do the work for about 5 minutes.

3.  Oil a mixing bowl and put the ball of dough into it, cover loosely with cling film and leave in a warm draft free place to rise until it has doubled in size.  That should take about an hour this time of year but may take longer if your kitchen is cold.

4.  Put the oven on as high as it will go with the lightly floured pizza stone or baking tray inside far enough in advance that it will be up to temperature for when you are ready to bake the pitta bread.

5.  Lightly flour the work surface and then scoop out the ball of dough and “knock” it back so that you effectively punch all the rise out of it.

6.  Roll the dough into a sausage shape and then divide with a sharp knife into 6 or 8 portions.

7.  Roll out each portion into a rough oval shape about 5mm thick and then bake in the oven for 6 – 10 minutes, depending on how hot your oven will go really.  The pittas will be done when they have risen in the centre and are just beginning to brown, although they won’t go very dark at all.

8.  Remove and leave to cool on a wire rack.  Depending on the size of your oven and baking trays/stone you may need to bake these in batches.