- Pita bread is such a simple food. But when you make it homemade,
it's absolutely incredible. I'm gonna show you how easy it is to make, and you are gonna love it
when you take your first bite. I have such awesome memories
of racing home after school just to eat something, I was starving. Whether it's a gigantic bowl of cereal with the biggest spoon I could find, or stuffed pita bread
or like me and my dad used to call it, just pocket bread. See how much lunch meat,
lettuce and tomatoes we can jam in there, so, so good. Let me show you how easy
this is to make, okay? First, we need to get that raft going. Sound good? Let's bake. - [Narrator] The first thing we need to do is activate our yeast, so in a stand mixer I'm
gonna add in some hot water in between 115 and 120. I know it's hotter, but the cold bowl is gonna bring it down to
that perfect temperature. Next go ahead and sprinkle
in some active yeast and, because it's active
we need to feed it to get it going so that it
forms that perfect raft. So, at this point, add in about half the amount of
sugar for the entire recipe. We're gonna give it a
quick little whisk by hand. No need to put a whisk
on the stand attachment. Just do it by hand, and
we're gonna let it sit for in between five and seven minutes. - Comies, it's the simple things
like activating your yeast so that you can make bread that rises. Super simply technique,
but once you learn it and start applying it to the other breads that you're making, you're going to make the most incredible
homemade food from scratch and better than anything you're gonna get in the store or the
restaurant, I promise you. Now what we need to do is-- - [Narrator] Get going
on our dry ingredients. On in a separate bowl I've
got some all-purpose flour. If you only have bread flour that should actually be okay as well. And in traditional
fashion we're going to add in some whole wheat flour going to provide some great flavor here. We're going to add in
the rest of the sugar that we didn't use when feeding the yeast. We're going to season it up
with a little bit of sea salt. I'm a huge fan of sea salt, you could use kosher
salt as well no problem using a whisk ahead and combine all of these ingredients together. You want to make sure it's
mixing really, really well because we're obviously going to pour right into our stand mixer. Let's go have a look. You can see a beautiful raft
has begun to form on top. This looks perfect you
get a little closer look, you can see it even kind
of burping up a little bit it's very active ready to roll. So at this point go ahead
and fix your hook attachment on the stand mixer we're
going to get it going for a little fat, we're going to add in some
extra virgin olive oil. And then scoop by scoop what I like to do is sort of just add in
those dry ingredients, you can absolutely put
it all in once but for me in this big bowl, flour
seems to go everywhere. And I don't like cleaning
up my kitchen twice. So what I'm going to do is just
add it in one cup at a time until it's all in there. And this part of the process
takes a little bit of time. It's in between eight and 10 minutes when meeting it with a stand mixer. Yes, you can do it by
hand but you're probably looking at more like 15 minutes. The stand mixer can do way
better job than you can, but mix it until it's got
a nice, smooth surface and it is a little bit sticky. I cannot say it enough you want this dough to be a bit sticky. At this point, let's go ahead
and pull it off the hook and out of the bowl. We've got a lightly floured surface and you can barely see it, we're gonna form it into a ball just like I do with all of my other doughs. Kind of make sure we
can we can test it out. You see that's perfectly smooth, and then make sure that
it's good push your finger in there and if it springs right back, we know we're in good shape. And to prove that it's
sticky, take a little pinch it sticks to your finger like that this is absolutely perfect and exactly how you want your pita bread dough to be. So now what we're going to do
is add it right to a container and hit it with a little bit of olive oil just to coat it up. Make sure that it comes right out of there with these and it's not sticking and pop a lid over the top and
you know my little trick. We're going over to oven we're
going to put it in there. Just going to turn the light
on this is a perfect proofing environment, it's going
to take about 90 minutes or until it doubles in size. - I'm going to stop and say yes, I know making bread is
a labor time of love. But there's nothing like homemade bread It's so super good and one of
those fundamental foundational foods in the history of the world, I promise you just a
little bit more to go. You're going to love it, just hold on. What we're going to do is-- - [ Narrator] Pull our bread out you can see it's doubled in size. That's why I like to use these containers because you can literally measure and see how much it's risen on the side. Go ahead and lightly flour up a surface we're going to take out the dough, it's super light and
fluffy It's really awesome. And what I like to do is press it down into a rough rectangle
doesn't have to be perfect, but sort of form it into
that rectangle shape and then using a bench knife, I'm going to cut it into
12 individual pieces. So just cut it in half and
then work your way over into threes and then come back
and cut it down the center doesn't have to be perfect, it's totally okay if some
are a little bit bigger than the others don't
freak out about this. Go ahead and take one
and then we need to form it into a little ball. What I like to do is sort of
tuck the dough underneath it and continue to do it until
it's nice and smooth on top. This is only going to take
maybe 15 to 20 seconds each. no reason for them to look
perfect because we're gonna roll them out in a little
bit so don't stress out if they're not a perfectly
smooth ball on all sides. Set it to the side on a little
bit of flour on a countertop, I like to give it a little press down and then next to it a
little bit more flour. Go ahead and take one of
those balls add it there. But make sure you cover the
other ones with a towel. Now go back roll it out
we want to make sure it's smooth on top. Don't do any creases
or anything like that. Make sure it's completely
smooth and then continue to roll it until it's about an
eighth of an inch thick. The thinner the better here
you guys I promise you. We're going to set it to the
side, we gonna add on a towel is going to rise for 30 more minutes. But in the meantime what I'm going to do is add a pizza stone to an oven, and I'm going to crank the
heat on 550 (mumbles) go 500. - So there are actually
a couple different ways to cook pita bread. You saw me prep up the
oven with the pizza stone, it's super hot, you can
use a cookie sheet tray to okay if you don't have
pizza stone, no problem. The other way is on the cooktop. Here is both ways. - [ Narrator] Let's go
ahead and remove our rolled out round pita bread dough. I'm going right into the oven
on that pre-heated hot stone. Go ahead and close up the door. We're looking at maybe two
minutes per side in the oven, you can see it start to rise up. Once it is completely risen. What I'm going to do is
flip it over use a spatula, maybe even tongs would be okay. We're going to cook it
for a couple more minutes. You can really see that it's rising this is perfect pita
bread or pocket bread. And let's just go ahead and take a look. I mean it looks great,
it's starting to fall a little bit because it's
out of the oven, that's fine. But I like the other
way and that's in a pan in a hot cast iron skillet on low heat, let it sit for a few minutes. We're going to add it in there, you can see it start to bubble up. We're going to flip it
over maybe every 30 seconds for a total of two to three minutes. We just want to get some
brown spots on there. Make sure it's cooked through we don't want raw dough in
the middle that's no good. Again, flip it back over. You see those nice brown
spots absolutely perfect we also want to make sure
that it rises completely. Let's fast forward (mumbles)
gonna take too long and you're gonna get mad at me. Perfect pocket bread my friends. This is absolutely excellent we are done. We're going to take it out of the pan and while there's nothing to play it up, check out these slow mo beauties. (bright upbeat music) - Holy smokes is this
bread just so so good. Be sure to like this video
subscribe to my channel, check out this video
coz you know that recipe is gonna be so good and
I'll see you on there. (bright upbeat music)
