It turns out really tasty fresh pitta bread is pretty easy to make. Who knew?! You need to start an hour or two before you want to eat them and you need to pay attention to the timings just to know when stuff happens.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons fast action yeast
• 500g strong white flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 300ml warm water

I often skimp on salt in my recipes but it was very noticable in these pittas so I recommend putting in the full amount.

Method

Preparation

• Combine yeast and warm water in a large bowl and leave for 10 minutes until it’s frothy.
• Add everything else to the bowl and mix.
• Tip out and knead for 10 minutes. Use as little flour as possible for dusting (or try oil instead?).
• Leave to rise for an hour somewhere warm.

Cooking

• Preheat oven to 230C with a baking tray in the oven. Ideally a heavy tray that will hold the heat well.
• Take risen dough (should be double in size) and separate into eight pieces.
• Roll each out with a rolling pin (again with minimal flour for dusting) until they’re quite thin (around 3mm).
• Once they are rolled out and the oven has reached temperature, take out the tray, dust with a little flour, place the pittas on the tray and put back in the oven.
• They take around 5 minutes to cook and should puff up superbly.

Eating

Eat them hot and fresh!

Storage

This recipe makes more than I need for one meal normally so I put half in a tub in the fridge after it has risen. The next day I take it out an hour before I want it to let it warm up, then continue with the Cooking steps above.