I am writing about a simple recipe that I thought before was harder to make. I was wrong on that though.
Bob got a recipe and immediately me and Jean tackle it.
I try to buy a good active yeast and put the rest in a sealed container and store in the refrigerator, but I often find that the yeast here in the Philippines is already dead, or just not working very well.
We used to buy Pita Bread at our local SM Mall, but they have been “out of stock” for a long time, so Bob asked me to make some to satisfy his craving!
Pita bread can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Anyway here’s the recipe for the pita bread.
Pita Bread Recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1 cup water ( make it warm not boiling, on my water I just put in the microwave for 30-35 seconds)
- 2 teaspoon active dry yeast (hard to find good yeast in the Philippines that last longer in the fridge, so I put 3 teaspoon)
- 2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour ( the other 1/2 cup use it when kneading the flour)
- 1 – 2 teaspoons of salt
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
Procedure:
- Put the 3 teaspoon yeast to a mixing bowl, put the warm water with the yeast. Let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes until you see the yeast dissolved. Add the flour, together with the salt and the olive oil. Mix it together until it formed into a dough.
- Sprinkle the clean surface of your counter with the flour and put your dough. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes until the dough become smooth. While kneading you might have to add more flour for the dough not to stick with your hands and the counter.
- Put some olive oil to the mixing bowl, the one you used to mix all the ingredients. Put the kneaded dough there, put some oil on top of the dough. Cover it with clean cloth or cling wrap. I used cling wrap. Let the dough rise until its almost doubled when you originally put in the bowl. Approximately an hour to 2 hours.
- After the dough was rising, gently deflate the dough and divide the though into 8 equal parts. Put all the dough again on the floured surface.
- Use a floured rolling pin, roll one of the pieces into a circle like 8 inches to 9 inches wide about almost quarter of inches in thickness. Keep turning and lifting dough as you roll the dough. Make sure the dough is not sticking on the counter. Sprinkle flour if its sticking.
- When cooking the dough, I put like a tablespoon of oil in the skillet in medium heat. Lower the heat if necessary. When it’s hot, drop the rolled dough and turn the dough every 3 to 5 seconds. Keep doing it until the dough is done. Keep an eye it gets burn easy. Just eyeball the pita if its done cooking or to your liking.
- Let it coll in a plate and cut it in half with scissors. Open the inside of the pita and you can put anything you like. For us we like to put salad inside or some meatballs or some ham.
***I just used a small amount from the dough, so I just got one or 2 like an almost the size of tennis ball and keep the rest in the fridge. If you don’t use all the dough, wrap the one that you are not using in a cling wrap and put it in an air tight container. Put it on the fridge until the next time you use it. Pita can be in the fridge for one week.***
Good luck everyone and have fun cooking!