If there’s one thing I love, it’s airy and warm pita bread. Preferably home-baked and filled with delicious things, preferably some Middle Eastern-inspired filling such as falafel, kebabs or spicy lentil meatballs. And then along with a good tahini dressing, lettuce, hummus and pickled red onions. Can you taste it for yourselves? So these are just some wonderful flavours! And of course, you can be as creative as you want when it comes to pita bread.
Here is my recipe for the bread itself. Pita means flat in Greek, and it is eaten a lot in Greek cuisine and around the Mediterranean. In Greek cuisine, it has mainly been used to dip in hummus and to serve falafel and kebabs. So even though flatbread is a completely traditional dish, it is not far from how we eat pita bread today.
Easy and classic pita bread
My recipe for pita bread is super easy to make. It’s actually so easy and delicious that I rarely buy them ready-made anymore. With pita bread, you just get a much better result when you make the bread yourself. These are the world’s best pita bread, so give my recipe a shot and see if you’re also going to make them yourself from now on.
It only takes a little patience when the pita bread has to rise. But you can possibly make a double portion and freeze half down – then you have another good time where you do not have as much time in the kitchen.
Homemade pita bread is also ingenious for the packed lunch with leftover fillings or just for dipping in hummus. Easy and just a little more delicious than a rye bread sandwich. You can also make delicious pita pizzas with tomato, mozzarella and oregano, where you cut them over and add fillings.
Recipe for homemade pita bread
I bake my pita bread on plain wheat flour, but you can advantageously replace some of it with durum flour. You can also use a little wholemeal flour, eg graham flour or øland wheat flour or follow my recipe here for coarse pita bread with whole grains.
When you make homemade pita bread, no matter what type of flour you use, you will find that they become airier, softer and just more interesting than the ones purchased. The crumbs are completely different and they do not get dry and dull in the same way.
Get the recipe for airy homemade pita bread here:
Ingredients
300 ml of water
25 g yeast
30 g olive oil
10 g sugar
15 g flake salt
450 g wheat flour
Kitchen equipment
Cake roll
Dejsnitter
Baking steel
Prep
- Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water. Add olive oil, sugar and salt and wheat flour little by little.
- Knead the dough well, to a smooth and pliable dough that releases the edges of the bowl – preferably on a mixer.
- Let the dough rise covered to double size for one hour on the kitchen table or in a warm place.
- Turn the oven to 220 ° hot air and let the baking trays heat up. If you have a baking stone or baking steel, feel free to use it.
- Pour the dough onto a floured table and fold the dough together.
- Make the dough into a long roll and divide the dough into 6 pieces.
- Roll out each ball with a rolling pin to a pita bread with a diameter of 10-15 cm and 0.5 cm thick.
- Place each pita bread on two pieces of baking paper. Let them rise here for approx. 15-20 minutes until they lift a little.
- Take the plates out of the oven and pass the baking papers with the pita breads on them.
- Bake the pita breads at 220 ° hot air for approx. 10-14 minutes until golden on the edges and on the surface.
- Allow the pita breads to cool on a rack before cutting and filling.
How to make airy pita bread
It is of course alpha and omega that there is a cavity in the pita bread, which you can fill with salad, falafel, chicken or whatever you feel like. I therefore come up with some tips on how to get airy pita bread:
The dough should rise by two turns. Before and after you shape your pita bread.
Use high-gluten flour to make the dough pliable and smooth. The high protein content ensures that they also rise nicely!
Bake with baking steel, stone or preheated baking trays. And let the oven heat up well so that your baking sheet or stone is heated throughout.
You can also decide for yourself how big your homemade pita bread should be. Small and airy or large and airy.
Accessories for pita bread
Once the primary filling is in place, then it needs to be refilled with a lot of other delicious ingredients. I’m happy to get this in:
- Pickled red onions: Pickled red onions are good with eg lentils or falafel. Raw onions are also delicious.
- Salad: Spinach, arugula, iceberg, mixed salad – it all works well to fill the bread
- Hummus: Homemade hummus is great for smearing the bread with and goes really well with, for example, lentil slices or falafel.
- Cucumber: Sliced or diced. Fresh or in tzatziki.
- Avocado: Sliced or diced. Or guacamole if you want to fuse your Greek pita bread with Mexican.
- Mint dip: Mint dip is really underrated and fits so well in warm pita bread. It is especially good with lentils or falafels. If you add mint dip, you can also decorate with fresh mint on top.
- Dressing: Eg sour cream dressing, garlic dressing or tahini dressing. Most often, it is important not to go down on dressing!