Greek Pita Bread Recipe
Here's the best homemade pita bread recipe, that's flavorful, and easy to make. It's soft and elastic perfect for wraps. Fresh pita bread is much more tasty than store-bought and frozen.
What is Pita bread? Pita bread is a Greek flat bread with a round shape cooked on a very hot surface like a frying pan, a grill, or a griddle. It is used to make wraps like Souvlaki wraps or Gyros wraps you may also know it as Gyros bread.
Ingredients
What is Pita bread made of? Pita bread is made of flour, yeast, water, sugar, salt, and a neutral oil such as sunflower or corn oil.
Instant dry yeast works best in this recipe but you can use fresh if you like as well. Substituting with 18 grams of fresh yeast instead of dry.
Ingredients
- 500 grams (4 cups + 2 tablespoons) all-purpose flour
- 9 grams (1 tablespoon) instant dry yeast
- 300 ml lukewarm water
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoons sunflower or corn oil + some extra to oil the pan and the pitas
Instructions
Sift flour in a large bowl.
Mix flour with salt and sugar.
Dissolve yeast in water.
Add the oil and yeast water to the flour.
Knead for 6-10 minutes until you have a soft non-sticky dough.
Oil lightly the bowl and the top of the dough. Place the dough in the bowl.
Cover the bowl with a dampened tea towel.
Heat the oven to 100°C / 210°F for 2 minutes then turn it off.
Rise. Place the bowl in the oven and allow to rise for 1 hour and 30 minutes until almost tripled in size. Alternatively, you can leave it to rise at room temperature.
Press the dough to remove the air. Then transfer to a lightly oiled working surface.
Knead dough for a minute.
Shape into a round ball and then into a cord.
Cut the dough in half and then cut each half into 3 pieces of the same size (6 in total).
Shape each piece into a round ball. Make sure you close the bottom of the dough well.
Brush lightly each dough ball with oil. Then cover with a tea towel and rest for 10 minutes.
Shape into flatbread. Take a dough ball and open it up with your hands into a round 20-cm (8-inch) disk.
Heat a non-stick frying pan (or a cast-iron skillet) over high heat.
Brush pan with oil.
Cook the flatbread for 1 minute then flip and cook for another minute. Then turn the heat to low and cook for 30 more seconds.
Transfer the flatbread to a clean tea towel to cool. Turn the heat to high again.
Prepare the next flatbread.
Continue like this until you cook all the Pita.
Serve with dips, make wraps, or store it in the freezer for later use.
To store in the freezer place in a freezer plastic bag and freeze for up to 6 months.
Note: If you don't want to make big flatbread to use for wraps you can make smaller ones 15 cm (6-inch) instead of 20 cm (8-inch). They'll be more like soft, round, mini breads to serve together with soups, stews, or dips.
