Homemade pockets of delicious
May 4th, 2009
Have you decided on a recipe to enter into the Mom’s Real Food Recipe Carnival yet?
The recipe I am sharing with you today definitely is not a family recipe whatsoever, so it’s good that I already shared my mom’s Eggplant Parmigiana! In fact I’m not sure I ever had pitas growing up. They were sort of outlandish in an Italian family. We had plenty of bread and pasta but this particular configuration of flour and olive oil never took place.
So, for the past few weeks we’ve been eating a LOT of chickpeas in order to test hummus recipes and such. (Later this week I will post about Sunday Cooking Club and all of this month’s fabulous garbanzo recipes.) With so much hummus in the house it occurred to me that we really needed some pitas. I remembered seeing Vered’s homemade pita and thought…hey, I can do that!
Well…haha…not so fast. I started with a very basic pita recipe that called for Instant Yeast. But I’m not much of a bread baker. I thought yeast was…yeast. I picked some up at the store in those red packets my mom always had. This was a big ol’ PITA FAIL. Apparently I got Active Dry Yeast which needs to be activated in warm water or something. It’s actually not active at all otherwise. Confusing! It should be called “In-Active Dry Yeast.”
Next try went a whole lot better. I found the Instant stuff and this made all the difference. Rise, dough, rise! And it did. We thoroughly enjoyed our fluffy warm pitas with homemade hummus and cucumber slices one day, sprouts and swiss chard the next. They were so, so much better than store bought pitas. If you have a few hours and want to impress your family and friends (and yourself!), give these suckers a try.
Whole wheat pitas
adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman
3 cups whole wheat bread flour (plus more for flouring countertop)
3 Tbl. olive oil
2 tsp. instant yeast
2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 cup water
1-2 Tbl. melted butter (optional, but seriously, go for it!)
1. In food processor, combine flour, oil, yeast, salt and sugar. Turn machine on and add 1 cup of water through feed tube.
2. Process for about 30 seconds until dough forms a ball. You might need to add a little bit more water to help it along but you don’t want the dough too wet or sticky, just slightly so.
3. Turn dough onto floured surface and knead for a few seconds to create a ball. Place in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for 2 hours or until it has doubled in size.
4. Split dough into 8 equal smaller balls by dividing in half, then each piece in half, then each of those in half again. Let rest for at least 20 minutes, covered with plastic wrap or a towel.
5. Roll each ball out with a rolling pin until it looks like a pita. By this I mean it isn’t too thick and it isn’t too thin. Go for less than 1/4″ thickness, but more than 1/8″. Let dough disks rest for another 20 minutes.
6. You can bake on cookie sheets at 350 degrees or cook on the stovetop in a heavy skillet. Cook on first side for 2-4 minutes, then flip and cook another 2-4 minutes. The goal is for each pita to puff up at some point during the cooking process, creating the ‘pocket’ inside. If they don’t rise they are still good to eat but you won’t be able to cut them in half and stuff ‘em.
7. Brush pita tops with melted butter. Enjoy!
Now that this month’s Cooking Club is over I can get off this hummus kick but I still have a lot of leftover chickpeas in the house. What to do? Look forward to more recipes this week using everyone’s favorite legume! Then I’m going to start experimenting with raw foods as we look forward to June’s (Un)Cooking Club. Join us!
