You are pondering what to make for dinner. You love middle eastern food, but your partner is into food from Greece. One kid loves pizza, but the other one will basically only eat hotdogs. What are you supposed to do? Well, pita bread to the rescue. Here is my recipe for sourdough pita bread.
Pita bread is awesome. Soft, delicious hot bread with a built-in pocket that can be filled with anything your heart desires (I mean food!!). Best of all, they are really not hard to make.
Supermarket pita bread is normally made in a factory. A success criterion for factories is to push out as much of what they make in the least amount of time, but that is seldom good when we talk about food.
Especially bread needs to be left alone to develop taste and also to break down gluten. One reason there are so many gluten-insensitive people is that the factory-made bread never gets enough time to break down the gluten.
This recipe that I am providing here gets to do both of those things, which gives you a wonderful bread full of taste, that won’t fill you like a ton of bricks.
If you are just here for the recipe, you can press the button underneath to be automagically transported to the recipe:
Pita bread has a long history, which starts in the Middle East over 14,000 years ago, in the Stone Age.
The dough would be made using very rough milled grains and would stand around and attract free-floating yeast, much as sourdough was used later on.
With the invention of Brewer’s Yeast that started to become the go-to leavening.
Around 10,000 years ago people had domesticated ancient wheat grains and barley, so these grains were milled and used for these kinds of bread.
Around 4,500 pita bread was a staple and there are records of recipes. The bread was prepared in something akin to tandoor ovens.
Still, they were probably nothing like the kinds of pita bread that are prepared and eaten today.
In the Middle East, these pieces of bread are often still prepared in backyard stoves, but in most other regions of the world, these pieces of bread are made in factories.
I want to change that.
How do you get the pocket in this sourdough pita bread recipe?
So, you may wonder how the pocket is made in pita bread.
Do you somehow cut it in half and seal the bread up again? But wouldn’t they split open again? So many questions.
The answer is super simple. Steam. The pita bread is baked super hot. Crank your oven all the way up to 260°C/500°F.
As the bread is put onto a hot surface, all the water in the dough is quickly brought to boiling temperature, creating lots of steam which puffs the bread up in the middle.
This means a baking steel or baking stone is a great tool to get perfect pita bread. If you don’t have that you may want to prepare them on a heavy-duty cast-iron skillet on the stovetop.
When the bread then cools this gap doesn’t seal again, so when you cut it open there’s a convenient pocket in the middle.
The dough composition
Vitals
Total weight
871 grams
Pre-fermented flour
22.6%
Hydration
65%
Yield
8 pita bread
The dough
Flour selection
The dough is mainly made from bread flour, we need some strength to work against those crazy steam powers that blow up the bread.
I also like to put some whole grain in my pita bread dough, so 20% of the flour is whole grain wheat flour. You can basically substitute with any whole grain flour that you like, even gluten-free flours will work.
Hydration
The hydration of the dough is 65%, but this should be taken with a grain of salt, because after mixing the dough we knead it, and here it is important to add enough flour to have a nice supple tacky but not sticky dough.
You don’t want the dough to stick to everything making it impossible to move it to the oven.
Other extras
A bit of olive oil and sugar is added to the dough, which will both help soften the dough and let it stay moist for longer.
The salt content is 2.6% to really bring out the taste of the flour.
The formula
Weight
Ingredient
Baker's Percentage
308g
bread flour
80.0%
77g
whole grain wheat flour
20.0%
211g
water
54.8%
225g
starter (100% hydration)
58.4%
25g
olive oil
6.5%
15g
sugar
3.9%
10g
salt
2.6%
If you want to play around with the formula, and change hydration or quantity, you can do so in my Bread Calculator.
The conclusion of this sourdough pita bread recipe
These pita bread are absolutely a delight and it requires so little work to make them.
They are soft and fluffy. They have a wonderful fermented taste with lots of nutty notes from whole grain wheat flour.
The pocket is super well defined making it easy to cut the pita open and fill it with all the goodies in the world.
They can be eaten straight out of the oven. They can stay good in a sealed plastic bag on your counter and be reheated or you can put them in the freezer for 3 months, thaw them in the fridge, and be reheated in the oven.
Why are you sitting there reading? Go make delicious pita bread.
Ideas for fillings for sourdough pita bread
Here are my four ideas for fillings that
Middle Eastern-inspired pita bread
To your warm pita add:
3 fried crushed falafels
Thinly sliced halved cucumbers
Halved cherry tomatoes
Thinly slice red onions
Drizzle over some tahini.
Top with some finely chopped mint leaves
Greek-inspired pita bread
To your warm pita add:
Thinly sliced halved cucumbers
Halved cherry tomatoes
Thinly slice red onions
Some delicious cubed feta
Drizzle over some greek salad dressing made by whisking:
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ clove garlic, minced
¼ tsp dried oregano
¼ tbsp kosher salt
A dash of freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup or 60 ml olive oil
Top with finely chopped oregano
Italian inspired pita bread
Heat your oven to 220°C/425°F.
Put a pita on a peel and spread some passata on it. Top with some sliced buffalo mozzarella.
Then put some fresh leaves of basil on top. Heat in the oven for 7-8 minutes until the pita is crispy.
Add a fresh leaf of basil. Slice and serve.
Danish-inspired pita bread
To your warm pita add:
Sliced boiled red hotdogs (or another kind if you can’t get red)
Top with ketchup
Strong mustard
Sweet mustard
Remoulade
Diced raw onions
Fried onions
And pickled cucumbers (also known as cucumber salad):
1 cup/240 ml vinegar
1 cup/240 ml sugar
Mix to combine.
Slice an English cucumber very thinly and add to the mixture.
Leave to infuse at least 1 hour, but it’s better with 24 hours.
Please share this recipe for sourdough pita bread on social media
This is my recipe for sourdough pita bread. If you like the recipe please consider sharing it with like-minded food lovers on social media.
If you make it and post it on Instagram, please tag me as @foodgeek.dk so I can see it. That would make me very happy.
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
Pita Bread is surprisingly easy to make, and it's a delicious flatbread with a built-in pocket for all the delightful things you can come up with you want to stuff inside.
In a medium bowl add: 308g bread flour, 77g whole grain flour, 15g sugar and 10g salt.
Mix it with your fingers to distribute everything evenly.
Then add 25g olive oil, 225g sourdough starter (fed and risen to its peak) and 211g water.
Mix until all the flour has been hydrated.
Then flour your counter and knead the dough until it's smooth; adding extra flour as needed so, you have a tacky but not sticky dough.
Ferment the dough
Put the dough back in the bowl, cover it and let it ferment around 6 hours at room temperature until the dough has doubled in size.
After it's doubled, put it in the refrigerator until you need it. It can easily stay in the fridge for up to one week.
Pre-shape the pitas
Heat your oven to 260°C/500°F with a baking steel inside. Alternatively, an inverted baking sheet.
Divide the dough into 8.
Shape each piece of dough into a ball and tighten the surface by pushing the dough up into the center of the ball, turning the dough about an eighth, going for as many iterations as it takes.
Place all the balls under a dishtowel. Let them rest for 20 minutes.
Shape the pitas
Roll out each ball into a very flat round piece of dough. Go for as thin as you can without tearing the dough.
Place each disc under dish towels so that they don't dry out.
You should be ready to bake after about 20 minutes.
Bake the pita
If you want to make them on the stovetop, go to the next section.
If you are very agile, you may be able to bake more than one pita at a time, but since they bake so quickly, I suggest that you bake them separately if it's your first time.
Open the oven, add a pita to the baking steel and close the oven.
Bake for about 1½ minutes. In the last 30 seconds the pita should puff up like crazy. If it doesn't puff up, extend this time until it does.
Then open the oven and flip over the pita using a spatula.
Bake for one minute more.
Put the pitas on a wire rack until you finish baking.
Make on cast-iron skillet
Heat a cast-iron skillet to the highest heat possible for 15 minutes.
Put a pita on the pan and wait for it to puff up 1-2 minutes.
Flip it over and bake another minute on the other side.
Put on a wire rack while preparing the rest of the pitas on the skillet.
Video
Noter
The pita bread can be used immediately, cooled down, stored in a plastic bag and reheated later, or frozen for up to 3 months.
