25 October 2013



Pita bread… a tasty base for any delicious meal.
3 tbsp active dry yeast + 1/2 cup warm water + 1 tsp sugar
2 cups bread flour; 1 cup wheat (or any flour combination you want, adding up to 3 cups. keep in mind the whole wheats will accelerate the rise)
3/4 cup warm water
2 tsp salt + 1/4 cup warm water
Let your commercial yeast bubble up happily in a glass of warm water with sugar stirred in to give it something to munch on. Mix your flours separately (I did a 2:1 ratio of white:wheat), add the foamy yeast environment you’ve created plus enough water to create your dough. I let it sit for about 15 minutes to let a little of the gluten development get underway before adding in a generous portion of salt with the remaining water (slow that fermentation down!), transferring the dough (at this point pretty wet) to the counter & kneading it while adding flour till it’s a manageable dryer dough.

This dough rose like crazy, even at a crisp inside temperature that reflected the gloom outside. I let it sit for about 2.5 hours and then popped it in the fridge to finish its fermentation there veeery slowly while I went to work (the beauty of the slow rise is that it can accommodate your schedule!)

Cut it into little pieces, practice your pizza spin if you feel like it, get the dough nice and stretched out (this should be a good test of the gluten development) and pop it in the oven, baking each side.

I used this recipe from about.com. Probably could have done it fully whole wheat, or with a bit of rye (I’m on a rye kick right now). And definitely would add more salt next time, maybe 3+ tsp. That would correspond to a slower fermentation, but again, manageable when some or all of that is slow rise in the fridge.

Off to have some tasty shakshuka with this bread! Gotta love a good potluck.

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