It's not a P.I.T.A. to make pita bread!

A few weeks ago, Sarah at Homemade asked me if I'd like to start making some recipes together, and we would blog about our experiences. So of course I said yes! Sarah's a sweetheart and It's like baking in your friend's kitchen, except that she's on the west coast, while I'm on east coast. We'll be doing one or two a month, so stay tuned.

The first one we decided to try was pita bread. And what a great recipe! The dough was a dream to work with. I needed to add more flour during kneading because it was quite sticky, but once you get the texture right, it's all good.

The most time consuming part of these is when you set the dough aside to rise. They've got a 90 minute rise, a 20 minute rest, and another 30 minute rest before baking. But they only take 3 minutes to bake, so that makes up for it right? And even better--when you rip one open--because that's a law, isn't it? You are legally required to rip open a piece of bread when it's hot out of the oven, even if it causes acute pain to your digits. So when you rip one open, you get the aroma of yeasty heavenly steamy bread. You don't even need butter to enjoy these, although, I'm pretty sure there's a law somewhere about hot bread and butter going together.

Come to think of it, there should also be a law about not making blog posts at 12:45 am, too. Can I ramble, or what?



The recipe can be found here at Brown Eyed Baker. I used my KitchenAid stand mixer and let that do the kneading. Ten minutes, and the addition of about 3/4-1 cup more flour and the dough was perfect. I doubled the recipe to get 16 pita breads, because we're a family of 6, and every one of my kids had pita bread (and butter) (wait--my two sons didn't have butter on theirs. The little hoodlums--breaking the warm bread/butter law at such an early age...) for dinner. See? Eight wouldn't have been enough. And my husband and I had them for dinner--in a burger recipe which will be an upcoming post. And if any of you try one recipe from this blog, these burgers would be in my top 5 favorites. mmmmm!

SO! I'm coming to the end of my ramblings. These pita breads are easy to make, and would be really fun to do with the kids. And it's kinda fun to watch them puff up in the oven, too.

Right after kneading, and ready to rise for 90 minutes.

After 90 minute rise, we have the dough that almost took over the world. Or at least my stove top.

Required low-angle shot of doughy balls.

"Almost pita breads! We've got to sit for 30 more minutes! And what happened to our balls?"

Puffy pillows of warm, yeasty, bready goodness.

Thanks Sarah--this was a lot of fun! And the whole family enjoyed the bread. Even the picky ones! (Kids, that is. We didn't have picky bread.) (But I'll bet picky bread doesn't like butter, either.)