Pita - Arabic bread

Let's make a traditional Arabic bread - pita bread. These are very simple homemade baked goods that use only the most affordable ingredients. The peculiarity of pita can be called its round flat shape, and also the emptiness in the middle. Thanks to the water vapor that forms inside the cake during baking, the dough swells like a ball and flakes. It turns out a kind of pocket, in which you can easily put absolutely any filling of your choice.

Pitas are usually made from wallpaper flour, but I prefer to use premium wheat flour. Of course, the finished cakes will not be brown, but this does not at all affect the taste and aroma of this unleavened bread. In a city apartment, blanks are baked in a well-heated oven at a high temperature directly on a dry baking sheet. I hope that the recipe will be useful to you and you will often indulge in homemade Arabian pits.

Ingredients

• Wheat flour of the highest grade (500 grams)
• Water (300 milliliters)
• Vegetable oil (50 milliliters)
• Fast acting yeast (1.5 teaspoons)
• Salt (1 teaspoon)

Directions

1. To prepare these fresh Arabian tortillas, we will take such simple and affordable ingredients as wheat flour (premium or first grade), water, refined vegetable (I have sunflower) oil, salt and yeast. I used fast-acting yeast, which does not require prior activation in the liquid, but is added directly to the flour. If you just have dry (also 1.5 teaspoon) yeast or pressed / fresh yeast (15 grams), dissolve them in warm water and let stand for 10-15 minutes.
2. Sift wheat flour into a bowl suitable for kneading the dough to get rid of sticky fragments or debris that sometimes occurs in this free-flowing product.
3. Add 1.5 teaspoons of fast-acting yeast and 1 teaspoon of salt (preferably fine). If the salt is coarse, it is advisable to dissolve it in warm water in advance. Stir the flour and yeast with your hand or a spoon so that the mixture becomes relatively smooth.
4. Now we make a hole in flour and pour lukewarm water and vegetable oil into it.
5. We knead a rather soft dough that keeps its shape perfectly and practically does not stick to our hands. You need to knead for a long time (with your hands - at least 10 minutes) so that the dough becomes completely homogeneous and smooth. Tighten the bowl with cling film or cover with a towel and leave warm for 2 hours. After 1 hour of fermentation, we do a light kneading to release the gas, round the dough and return to heat for another 1 hour.
6. After 2 hours of fermentation, yeast dough for tortillas will work very well and will grow in volume by at least 3-3.5 times.
7. We divide it into small pieces of the same size, round each one, giving the shape of a ball. We leave on the work surface, lightly dusty with flour, cover with a film or towel and let the blanks rest at room temperature for about 15 minutes.
8. Then we roll each piece of dough into a flat cake (no more than 5 millimeters thick), remembering to sprinkle the dough with flour (lightly) so that it does not stick to the rolling pin. Thus, we roll out all the blanks. We give them 10 minutes to rest on the table.
9. In advance (30 minutes before baking) we turn on the oven to heat up to 220 degrees along with the baking sheet - it should be hot. When the oven warms up properly, we take out a hot baking sheet (you can not take it out, but just pull it out) and quickly put several blanks on it.
10. Immediately close the oven door and cook the pita bread on a medium level for about 7-8 minutes. During this time, they will swell like balls and be completely baked. When the first batch is ready, remove the cakes from the baking sheet and bake the rest immediately.
11. Ready-made pits, if you did everything correctly, will inflate well, and will not tear - all the air will remain inside.
12. In total, from the indicated amount of ingredients used, I get 17 cakes, but your quantity may differ depending on the diameter of the blanks.
13. We serve the pitas warm, although after cooling they remain fresh for several days if stored in an airtight container or tightly tied bag. These cakes, by the way, can be frozen.
14. Arabian pita bread is soft, tender, aromatic and very tasty. They are hollow on the inside and are great for filling a wide variety of fillings. Give it a try, you must love this simple yet delicious homemade bread.