Wheat Pita Bread

Wheat Pita Bread - Yum!

Homemade pita bread is pretty simple... and there are so many ingredient variations to this that work well.  You can eat it plain, make it into a mini pizza, cut it and stuff it or just wrap your goodies up in it.  This is an easy recipe to make/tweak and doesn't go "clunk" in your gut when you eat it.  I'll list what ingredients I used for this one and list some other variations that have worked well too!

The Ingredients:
1 packet highly active rapid rise yeast
1 1/4 warm water
1 1/2 C white flour
1 1/2 C wheat flour
1/4 C olive oil
1 tsp salt
~1/4 C extra white flour for dusting

What To Do:
In a mixer bowl hand whisk (just until mixed) the yeast and 1/2 C of the water.  Then whisk (or stir w/ a wooden spoon) 1/4 C of white flour and 1/4 C of wheat flour (just until mixed).  Cover bowl w/ plastic wrap and let rise for 30 minutes.

Remove plastic wrap from bowl, attach dough hook to mixer and add the remaining 3/4 C warm water, 1 1/4 C white flour, 1 1/4 C wheat flour, olive oil, and salt.  Knead on the lowest setting for 8 minutes.  The dough will be smooth and elastic - very elastic.  It will almost seem too wet but trust me... the flour amounts are dead on in this recipe.  Place dough in oiled bowl, turning once to coat, cover w/ plastic wrap and let sit for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, place oven rack in middle of oven and preheat between 425-450F.  Place a pizza stone in the oven to heat up as the oven preheats.  Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface (here is where your extra 1/4 C will come in - you may use more or less depending).  Punch the dough down a few times and divide into ~ 8 balls.  Flatten and stretch the balls out into a 6-7 inch disc by hand.  Flour will be used each time from your extra 1/4 C but don't go overkill.  Transfer the discs to oil coated baking sheets to sit for 20-30 minutes.

Place 4 pitas (or however many will fit) on your pizza stone that has been heating in the oven.  Bake 2 minutes on one side, then flip and bake 1 minute more on the other side.  Transfer to cooling rack and let cool completely.  Repeat w/ remaining pitas until all are cooked.

My Thoughts:
This turned out to be a light and fluffy pita - love it!  After letting the pitas cool, my favorite way to prepare these is to crank up the broiler and put some pizza sauce, feta, or any other topping you want and broil it for a few minutes until the cheese is melted and the pita gets a crisp brown top (but maintains it's soft center).  Then I sprinkle Italian seasoning, garlic salt, or any other spice I'm in the mood for and it makes one awesome mini pizza.

Other variations I enjoy are just dipping the pita in olive oil as an appetizer or throwing some greens and dressing on it and folding it up like a gyro would be.  Never tried the gyro part and now that I think of it, that would probably be pretty good.  Rye makes a super good swap out for the wheat if you want to and I especially like adding caraway seeds to it when using rye flour.  I'm thinking of trying an oil switch (maybe walnut oil).  I'd also like to mix in some seasonings w/ the actual dough instead of putting them on top (rosemary or coriander would be nice).

Also, when handling the dough after it has mixed for 8 minutes, it helped to coat my hands in olive oil, so that I could get  the dough transferred over to the bowl.

This is a recipe that I just started to use and know that I will be utilizing even more in the future.  My issue is not eating all of the pitas in one day ;-)

Adapted from pure & yummy