The Bakery · Bread
Pita
- Intermediate
- 2 h 30 m
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a briny, maritime salinity.
Ingredients
- 500g bread flour (or half whole wheat, the Levant standard)
- 300ml warm water; 7g yeast; 1 tsp sugar
- 2 tbsp olive oil; 10g salt
- A baking steel, stone, or upturned cast-iron pan: ferocious bottom heat is the pocket-maker
- Nothing to fill them with yet; patience
Equipment
Skillet · Pizza steel
The skills inside
Proofing: the rise before the oven
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Knead a smooth, supple dough; rise 1 h. 60 min
- Divide in 8; ball tightly; rest 20 min (the rest, again, is the secret). 20 min
- Roll even 5mm rounds: thin spots tear, thick spots refuse to pocket; even is everything.
- Bake on the screaming-hot steel at 260°C: 2–3 min, they balloon like startled pufferfish. Wrap in a towel to fall soft. 3 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes
- Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
- The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
- The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
- Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
- It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.
Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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