Pita: Bread Recipe and Tips

(bright music) - This homemade pita bread recipe is so good. It's actually easier to make than you think. You just need a few simple ingredients, a little bit of patience in letting the dough rise and rolling the dough, and a really hot oven. Let me show you how to make it. So let's get started. All you need to make this recipe is six ingredients. We've got flour, sugar, salt, olive oil, yeast, and some warm water. What we're gonna do first is get this open, (laughs) but we're also gonna go ahead and just get the yeast, and sugar, and water dissolved, so it could have time to get nice and foamy.

You'll need one and a 4th cup of water in a stand mixer, a packet of yeast, and two teaspoons of granulated sugar. Now, we're just gonna give it a few minutes so the mixture gets nice and foamy, and it's a good indication that the yeast is alive and well, and the dough is gonna turn out perfect. So I actually grew up eating pita bread all the time. We had more pita bread in our house than sliced bread, and that was our go-to bread for sandwiches. When I sought out to make this recipe, I really wanted to make the thin ones that are really big, that are just more traditional in Arabic recipes, but those actually require a special machine. So what we're getting today is kind of these small, cute, puffed-up, little pita breads instead.

And this is so much more practical for making at home. Now that the yeast is foamy, we're gonna go ahead and add flour to this, along with salt and olive oil, and start mixing it by hand. For this first part, we just want the dough to be nice and shaggy. So we're gonna go ahead and mix it with a wooden spoon until it comes together. And we're gonna slowly add another cup of flour, and 1/3 cup of flour, and give it a good mix. Now, when the dough is shaggy like this, you can go ahead and start kneading it. You can knead it by hand if you wanted to, or just use a stand mixer if you have it, it's so much easier and faster.

All right, after 10 minutes, the dough comes together really well, just like this. What we're gonna do now is we're gonna go ahead and cover it with a plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and let it rest for one hour and the dough will double. And I wanna show you what the dough looks like after it's been resting for an hour. Turn this over to a floured surface. And now, we'll go ahead and divide the dough into 12 equal parts. And if it feels a little bit sticky, you can add a little bit of flour on top like this. It should feel somewhat sticky, but it shouldn't stick to your fingers. So now, we'll take each of those pieces and just tuck the corners to the bottom like this. And then, roll it into a ball.

And if it feels a little bit sticky, just add a little bit of flour again on your hands so that it doesn't stick to your fingers. Then, we'll take each of those little dough balls and put it on a tray covered with a damp kitchen towel. All right, it's been about 10 minutes. And now, what I like to do is take a small piece of parchment paper like this, set it down, put a little bit of flour on it. And then, take one of the dough balls that's been resting and place it on the parchment paper. And we wanna go ahead and roll this out as evenly and flat as possible. It's important to keep it even because that's what's gonna create the little air pockets that pita bread is so well-known for.

Pat, pat, pat, good girl. And then, we'll place this right here. And we're just gonna let it sit there while we do the rest of the dough. All right, our pita bread has been resting for 30 minutes and they're ready to go. They look nice and doughy and fluffy, and they've kind of risen just a little bit as well. I preheated the oven to 550. And I recommend preheating it as high as your oven will go. If that's 450 or 500, that's totally fine.

Essentially, we just wanna mimic a pizza oven in our home oven, right there. Another important tip is to add a pan in the oven while the oven is preheating because then the pita bread will hit that hot pan immediately. All right, it's time to pop 'em in the oven and we wanna move pretty quickly because we don't want that oven to lose any of its heat. All right, as soon as they come out of the oven, we're gonna go ahead and put 'em in on a tray and cover them up so they stay nice and moist.

All right, here's the final product. Look how good these look. They're so soft and moist. And let's open them up to see the air pocket inside. Got nice bubbles. It's airy, it's soft, and looks so good. And pita bread is wonderful for making sandwiches and wraps. You can break them up, toast them, and add 'em to salads like fattoush, or you can use it for dipping. What I like to do is add it to a nice plate of labneh with some za'atar, mint, and olive oil. That's so good, (chuckles) it's amazing.

Mm, that fresh pita bread straight out of the oven is warm, it's soft, and it's so delicious. I hope you get inspired to make pita bread at home. It's actually a pretty fail-proof recipe. Even if you make a couple mistakes here and there, it turns out so good every single time. I hope you try the recipe and I hope you love it. If you enjoyed this video, share it with friends and family. And I'll see you guys next time.