OK, so let’s talk about pita breads here (or shoarma breads if you like). Pita breads and I have a little thing going on, and the love is real (although sometimes I feel like the love comes more from my side). Fill them up with cheese… Great. Serve them with shoarma…. So nice. Eat them with a burger, some onion and hummus… Amaaazing! My secret craving? Hot pita bread with peanut butter.

For the basic recipe you’ll need the following:

– 300 grams of flour (whole grain, white, or mixed)
– 1 bag of dry yeast (7 grams)
– 1 table spoon of olive oil
– 1/4 teaspoon of sugar
– 1 teaspoon of salt
– 220 ml of lukewarm water

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, but watch closely how much water you add. What always helps me getting the dough worked up a little bit better: keep some flour apart before you start mixing and add the water until its wet enough to mix with a fork (don’t make it too runny though). Now mix this sticky dough for about 5 minutes with a wooden spoon or fork. Then add the rest of the flour and mix with your hands, until you have a nice supple dough).

Form the dough into a ball and let it rise under a cloth for about one hour. If you’re using all whole wheat flour, you can add half an hour to the rising time.

Now knead the dough one more time and form the dough into 8 balls, these will become your pita breads. Flatten them out with your hands by pulling on the dough (or use a roller).

Now you have two options.

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and bake the pita’s in 8-10 minutes (but check their color time to time, you don’t want them turning too dark (in fact I like them not changing color at all, so they stay nice and soft).

Or

2. Heat up some sunflower oil in a frying pan and bake the pita’s 2 minutes on each side on medium-high heat. This makes them a little more crispy than the oven method.
Another way to make the pita’s, when you have a little less time, is without a rise. Instead of the yeast you add two teaspoons of baking powder. Form the dough, split in 8 pieces, flatten and bake directly in the frying pan for 2 minutes on each side. These pita’s are not gonna be thick enough to split in half, so instead you can use them to wrap up your filling.

So now that you know how to bake the pita breads, it`s time to start thinking of what to fill them whit. Why not turn them into shawarma breads , or serve them with some nice lentil burgers. Whatever you eat them with, enjoy!