This week we are making sourdough pita breads. I enjoy pita bread as as change of pace from regular bread. I particularly enjoy them with some falafels and tahini sauce or with Schwarma. I used a 60/40 mix of my usual organic bread flour and white whole wheat flours.
I based these on a recipe from Breadtopia (no affiliation) with a video. I followed the recipe as written which was supposed to yield a fairly stiff dough. I was not using the same flour and did not get a stiff dough. In hindsight, I should have held back 20 grams or so of the water. I ended up adding a heaping soup spoon of whole wheat flour to stiffen up the dough but still didn’t get it as stiff as the video.
I have not made pitas before and there was a learning curve when it came rolling out the dough to 8” rounds. This is a sticky, springy dough. Lots of flour is needed everywhere when rolling these out: board, dough and rolling pin. I used an 1/8” gauged rolling pin to get a uniform thickness when rolling these out. One of the keys to this to let the dough rest longer once it is divided into equal pieces and rolled into balls, at least 20 minutes. This recipe makes eight 8” pitas.
The Formula
| Ingredient | Amount | Bakers % |
| Starter | 70 g | 14% |
| Tot Flour | 500 g | 100% |
| Bread Flour | 300 g | 60% |
| White Whole Wheat Flour | 200 g | 40% |
| Water | 360 g | 72% |
| Olive Oil | 12 g | 2.4% |
| Salt | 10 g | 2% |
Note: Just figured out my dough issue. I misread the recipe and read 360 g of water as 380 g. Oops! The above formula has been corrected to the proper amount of water that should have been used, not what I actually used. I guess my assessment above that I should have withheld 20 grams of water was correct, since I used 20 grams too much.
My Process
- Weigh out all ingredients mid-afternoon.
- Mix flours and salt together.
- Mix water, olive oil and starter together.
- Slowly add flour mix to water mix. Incorporate each addition before adding the next.
- When all flour is added let dough rest 15-20 minutes to let flour absorb the water and hydrate.
- Briefly knead dough. Move to covered container for bulk fermentation.
- Stretch and fold dough 3-4 times at 15 minute intervals.
- Place covered container in fridge until just before bed time.
- Remove container from the fridge, stretch and fold dough and cover container. Let dough bulk ferment at room temperature for a total of 10-14 hours.
- The next morning place baking stone on rack in the next to the top rack position. Preheat the oven at its highest temperature for 60 minutes. In our case that was 525 F.
- Divide dough into 8 equal weight pieces.
- Form each dough piece into a ball. Cover with a damp linen towel and let rest 20 minutes.
- Flour work surface generously. Flour rolling pin. Roll each dough piece into 8” round between 1/8” and 1/4” thick.
- Place rolled dough on floured cookie sheet or peel. We could only fit 3 rounds on cookie sheet and on stone. In the end we did 2 at a time on cookie sheet and baking.
- Cover dough rounds with a damp linen towel and let rest 15-20 minutes.
- Before baking shake cookie sheet to make sure the dough is free to move. If not, loosen and more flour if necessary.
- Slide rounds onto baking stone and bake 6 minutes. At about 2 minute they will begin to puff up.
- Remove pitas from oven to a cooling rack. Stack baked pitas to help them deflate. Cover with a damp linen towel to prevent drying out.
- After about 20 minutes cooling place in a zip lock bag for storage.
These are tasty pitas, they puffed nicely and are hollow inside for stuffing. I had one lunch each half stuffed with a half of a Italian sausage patty, onions, peppers and tomatoes. Yummy!
Other than using the correct amount of water the next time I am also going to reduce the amount of salt. I dawned on me that 10 grams of salt in 8 pitas amount to 1250 mg salt per pita, way more than someone on a reduced sodium diet should have. I will probably cut the total to 5 grams the next time and see how they taste.