How to make homemade pita bread (2 ways)

Ingredients

Take the flour and put it in your stand up mixer.

Add the salt to the flour .

The instant yeast

The sugar

The oil

And lastly the water

After the machine has stirred the flour and water, we will stop the machine and take off the paddle and put on the dough hook

You know its ready when the dough isn't too sticky or wet. It is time to let it rest.

Take a large bowl, in my case a large pot and spray it with a light coating of oil.

Put the dough inside. Lightly coat the dough with some oil so it wont dry.

Cover it with saran wrap. Put it in a warm place so it can rise. I put it in my oven with the light on. Let it rise for 90 minutes.

Take a large piece of saran wrap

Spread some oil of any type on the plastic wrap. The ones in a can are wonderful here.

Place the greased cling wrap over the balls. Make sure they are well covered. Let them rest for another 30 minutes until doubled in size

They dough balls have doubled in size. Time to rock and roll..heehee. when you are ready to roll take one of the balls and deflate it.

Now the first method i will show you is the stove top method. Take a cast iron pan and set it over medium high heat. If you don't have a cast iron pan use a non stick pan no biggy.

On the cast iron pan add a dab of oil and spread it with a paper towel. keep the pan hot while we make the pitas.

Take some flour and put it on a flat surface.

Take one of the dough balls and place it on the floured surface. Keep the other dough balls covered.

Take a rolling pin and start rolling out the dough as round as you possibly can and to 1/4" thickness.

Looking good.If the dough seems to have resistance while you are rolling it and it doesn't want to hold its shape. Let it rest covered for another 6-7 minutes. You should than be able to roll it out.

Take your rolled out piece of pita dough and put it on the hot cast iron pan.

As soon as a pocket formed i turned it to brown the other side. yummyyyy. As soon as the pita brad is done put in a dish covered with a damp cotton towel.

Than place them in a ziploc bag to keep them from getting hard and of course to keep them soft.

this is the pocket formed from the pan made pita bread.

Now lets go to our second method of making pita. Take a cast iron pan and place it on the lowest shelf of your oven upside down. Preheat your oven to 500F and let the pan get hot that is key.

If you don't have a cast iron pan. You can use a thick cookie sheet. Just make sure to keep it in the oven while the oven is getting hot. The sheet needs to be hot when the pita bread touches it.

Roll out the dough as i showed you before, but this time spritz the top lightly with water. This will help the pita bread puff up.

I place the rolled out dough right on top of the hot cast iron pan.

These are the pita breads i made. The ones to the left were made in the oven and the ones to the right on the stove top. Either way they were delicious . enjoy

Do not be disappointed if some of your pita bread don't puff. Some of mine didn't also. You will still have a nice tasting pita bread that could be eaten as a flat bread. Enjoy

The pitas will remain fresh for 2 days stored in a food storage bag or you can freeze them for later use.