Making Pita Bread at home is easier as you may think. Besides flour, water, yeast and salt you just need a TSP sugar and a splash olive oil. Each pita bread has around 90-130 g and gets baked on a very hot iron griddle in the oven or on the stove top. You can have ovenfresh homemade pocket breads ready in under two hours. Serve it with mediterranean salads and classic spreads like hummus.
We love it for lunch or an early dinner. But be warned, it is addictive! You can easily overeat yourself. 😂 To make everything even more convinient for you, we created this recipe based on our WURZELBROT bread mix. Yes, that’s right, we turned the classic rustic German baguette into a beloved mediterranean pita bread.
How to make Pita Bread
To get the dough pieces puffed up as planned it is important to have a very hot baking surface. Use a baking stone or your cast iron griddle and pre-heat for 15-20 min. As mentioned, you can bake it in the oven (our preferred method) or on the stove top. There are always 1-2 pieces that will not form the full pocket, but they still taste equally good.
The following instructions make you 7-9 delicious Pita Breads. NOTE: Use a digital scale to measure the water in gramm (or oz NOT fl.oz)!
Dough:
1/2 Bread Mix WURZELBROT
5 g / 1 TSP Cane Sugar
300-320 g / 10.6-11.3 oz Water at room temperature
1 TBS / 15 g Olive Oil
STEP 1 – In a large mixing bowl whisk all ingredients together until fully combined. When you knead by hand, give it ca. 10-13 min of kneading. TiP: you can add a 15 min rest (covered) after mixing so the kneading can be reduced to only 7-8 min.
When you choose a kitchen machine, use the dough hook and knead for 10 min on a medium speed. The dough will be tacky to the touch but not overly sticky. Take it out of the bowl, lightly flour the surface, re-knead for 2-3x and shape a ball. Put it back into the bowl, cover with cling foil to avoid drying out. Let it rest for 1 hour at room temperature.
STEP 2 – When the dough is ready, start pre-heating the oven to 450°F with the baking stone.
STEP 3 – Divide the dough in 7-9 equal pieces using a digital scale. We like a medium size with ca. 108 g/piece that makes 8 pita bread pockets. Shape them into small balls and set aside, cover again with the cling foil. You should not need more flour for shaping, keep the dough lightly tacky.
How to roll out and shape Pita Bread
STEP 4 – When your oven has pre-heated for at least 15 min and your baking stone is very hot, you can start rolling out the pieces. ! Roll out only as many pieces as will fit on your baking surface.
STEP 4.1 – With a rolling pin roll out the dough piece into a thin (3-5 mm) disc. Lift and turn it to keep it mostly round. In case the dough springs back, set aside to give it 3-5 more minutes and try it again. Don’t use any more flour, otherwise the dough will slide and it gets harder to roll it out.
Take out the hot baking surface onto your stove top. Gently lift the rolled out disc from the edges and bring it to the baking stone/griddle. Place it correctly right away as it will stick and you can not correct the position. Pop the stone/griddle back into the oven and bake for ca. 5-7 min. Keep an eye on it after 5 min to eventually rotate and/or flip the pieces for even browning.
STEP 4.2 – Go ahead until all dough pieces are rolled out and baked, batch-wise.
STEP 5 – Let your homemade baked pita breads cool on a wire rack. When you like it super soft, cover the baked breads with a dumb kitchen towel right after taking it out of the oven. Let them cool before enjoying!
Show us your delicious results and beautiful pita pocket breads. Share it via Social Media and tag as with #breadistaworld and @breadistaworld – we would love to see it!
