Pita bread


Share Button

FullSizeRender

Preparation time : 1 and 1/2 hours
Cooking time      :  4-5 minutes
Serves                : 3 members

Description

We are invited for lunch to a friend’s place on our holiday visit to Dubai. I make sure to be of some help to my friend in the kitchen. She asks me to open a packet and place the flat breads on a plate and serve it in the table. As opening the package, I get to see pita bread written over it. I was like, so this is the pita bread and made sure to try it out as well. After that it was a forgotten story. After years on my visit to Cochin at the lulu mall, I see them make fresh pita bread using a machine in their food court. My jaws dropped literally seeing how efficiently the machine made these breads. Back home, one day when I wanted to serve some thing out of the box than the regular. The pita bread popped up in my mind. I gave it a try with the results being not bad at all for my first try. Served it with three different Arabic dips. Dinner table was silent, with no complaints it vanished away with in a few minutes time. From getting to open a packet of pita breads in Dubai, to my jaw dropping in Cochin seeing how the pita bread is made, to making it at home in my home kitchen was a real worth memorable journey.

Ingredients

Ingredients
Quantity
Warm water1 cup
Dry yeast2 teaspoons
Honey1 teaspoon
Wheat flour1 and 1/2 cups
Flour / maida1 and 1/4 cups + 1 tablespoon
Olive oil1 tablespoon
Saltto taste

Method

  • Mix warm water, yeast and honey together. Keep aside for five minutes. Add wheat flour, flour 1 and 1/4 cups, olive oil and salt to the yeast mix.
  • Knead well for five minutes by dusting 1 tablespoon of flour to get a smooth dough. Roll the dough into a ball. Grease the dough with oil. Keep covered for one hour.
  • Punch down the doubled dough and knead again for two minutes. Roll the dough into equal nine lemon size balls. Roll each ball into 1/4 inch thickness round rotis.
  • Cover the rolled pita dough with a wet cloth for 30 minutes.
  • Preheat the oven to 230 degrees Celsius for ten minutes. Place two rolled pita breads in the middle rack of the oven and bake for 4-5 minutes.
  • Once the pita breads puff up, remove and continue to do the same with the rest as well. Cool completely.
  • Cut each pita bread into triangles and serve with hummus or baba ganoush.