How to Make Homemade Pita Bread and Shakshuka

[Music] my [Music] today on america's test kitchen aaron makes bridget foolproof pita bread jack challenges julia to a taste test of international yogurts dan reveals the science behind perfectly proofed dough and keith makes julia the mediterranean classic shakshuka it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen [Music] i bake a lot of bread at home but i don't bake pita bread and that's probably a shame because supermarket pita is a pale comparison of the real deal this is straight out of the bag from the supermarket not supposed to have a pocket no this has a hint of a pocket there's really nothing in there how am i supposed to stuff all that good lamb shwarma and everything else into the pita and of course it tears so easily is it too much to ask for a pocket in our pita erin it is not too much to ask bridget it's definitely doable and it's a lot of fun to make okay before we start bridgette i want to emphasize the importance of actually weighing your ingredients when you're baking bread or baking anything for that matter i really highly recommend that you invest into scale accurate every time and it's kind of easier to do it is easier to do so we're going to start off with 14 and two thirds ounces of king arthur bread flour and we're gonna add two and a quarter teaspoons of instant yeast okay so now we're going to move on to our water anytime you make ice water you always want to fill up your container with ice and then top it off with water okay so it should be more ice to water and i'm going to strain this we want 10 and a half ounces of ice water if you did have a different brand of bread flour aside from king arthur you'd want to decrease this by one ounce okay so now i'm going to add my ice water to my dry ingredients and that's really important that we're using ice water because if it warms up too much it's going to ferment a little too fast and it's going to create bubbles in addition to that we're going to add four teaspoons of honey any type of honey is fine and i'm also going to add a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil now we're just going to turn the mixer on low speed for about one to two minutes until all that flour absorbs the water okay this looks perfect we're going to let this sit here for about 10 minutes we want that flour to really absorb the water which is going to kick start the gluten process which is also known as autolease 10 minutes 10 minutes okay well slow fermentation is the key to a perfectly puffed pita and we're keeping the dough as cold as possible before it goes into the fridge to ferment and here's why as soon as yeast meets water fermentation begins now during fermentation two things happen first flavor development yeast gradually makes a panoply of alcohols and acids which give bread delicious complex flavor but what we're focusing on here is the second process structural development the yeast creates carbon dioxide gas bubbles which give the dough lift the warmer the dough the faster fermentation occurs mixing the dough with room temperature water gives the yeast a head start so after it's been in the fridge for 24 hours the gas bubbles have grown large this can cause tearing later on when we roll it out now we can slow fermentation down by starting with ice water the cold temperature during mixing means the yeast doesn't get that head start before it goes into the fridge the entire fermentation happens very slowly and the bubbles never get too big the upshot is that we end up with a smoother dough that won't tear when we roll it out and that's why we need ice water for the perfect pitas okay so this has sat for 10 minutes auto lisa's kick started and now we're going to add one and a quarter teaspoons of table salt if you add the salt earlier the salt is going to draw out the moisture and it's going to inhibit the gluten formation so we really want that kick start to happen we're going to turn this on to medium speed and we're going to let this mix for about six to eight minutes until a dough ball forms and it clears the side of the bowl okay so our dough has cleared the sides of the bowl as you can see and we are ready to roll are you ready to roll i am ready to roll this dough is fairly tacky and you mean tacky like a good thing yeah so we are gonna spray down our counter oh i'm just gonna knead this for about a minute what i'm doing here is i'm just shaping it into a dough ball and you'll notice that i'm using oil and i'm not using flour we weighed our flour earlier and we weighed our water earlier so i really don't want to throw up that ratio that we work so hard for you don't want to use too much because you want this dough to grab onto the counter so we have our dough ball we are now going to divide this dough into eight pieces you know as best i can and then i'm just going to weigh them to check myself so i'm going to oil my bowl lightly and let's see how i did we're looking for 3 and 3 8 ounces for each dough ball gotcha perfect so we have our dough balls can you grab that tray for me that is also greased as i might observe here lightly oil so we are gonna shape you wanna help me shape i'm gonna show you how to do otherwise this means nothing okay so we want these to be in a tight round shape so what i'm doing is i'm basically taking the dough from the exterior and i'm really bringing it into the center of the dough okay so now you want to put the seam side down and you just kind of like put your hand over it and you just roll it in a circle it's grabbing onto the counter and the important thing here is that once you have a perfect dough ball you flip it over there should be no dimple now what would happen if one say had a dimple your pita might not perfectly puff okay so now we're gonna spray these with more oil okay and then we're gonna cover it with plastic wrap so should this be uh tightly wrapped so we're tightly wrapping it what we're gonna do is put this into the fridge for about 16 to 24 hours okay and that's going to allow the yeast to slowly ferment and moderate bubbles to form but not big bubbles and the flavor is going to also become more complex okay bridget our dough is out it has been refrigerated for about 24 hours and we're ready to roll okay first i'm going to flour our workspace basically we're going to roll the dough out one of the most important things we want here is we want to make sure that these dough balls are handled properly so one of the first steps is keep track of that side that's facing up okay nice smoother side exactly put this into our bowl of flour and i'm gonna heavily and generously coat it with flour would you like to yeah put a dough ball all right keep it in a nice shape that's the top side exactly the smoother side flip it over nice perfect and smooth side up right smooth side up all right you got it now we're just going to press it using your hands into about five inch round disc i usually start pressing from the inside out i want it to be even if there are any bubbles in there which there are because it did ferment i just want to kind of press them out a little bit gotcha all right that looks great now we're going to roll it into a seven inch round okay and the key here is to take our time start rolling from the center and work my way out if you rush the possibility of it sticking to the counter is greater make sure that the dough is always moving around and it doesn't stick and if it does stick stop and just lift it up and just throw some flour underneath all right all right oh it's really forgiving so we're rolling this out into a seven inch round are we good awesome and now we're gonna brush off any excess flour okay brush off both sides now we're going to lift these up and put them onto the peel keeping track of which side was up first so now we're going to put these into the oven 425 degrees rack to the lowest position any higher the dough would actually start to set too soon and it would not puff properly we've had a pizza stone heating up as well for about an hour we're going to let these bake for about one to three minutes it can go really fast so we really should not walk away and this is part of the fun and what are we looking for we are looking for them to totally puff up like a balloon are they are they both puffing there's the pocket that was yours good job making a pocket yep okay so now that they are puffed like a balloon i'm gonna go in there and roll them over so that they can brown on the other side okay all right i will pull those out for you look at that look at them beautiful they look like little sea creatures they do okay all right back in and how much longer and we're going to let these bake for about a minute just until the bottom gets lightly browned awesome okay so it's been about a minute and i'd say let's pull them look at those steamy little pitas beautiful all right so now we're just gonna put them on this wire cooling rack got a little bit of color there that's good yep and now we're going to cover them with a towel we want them to rest for about 10 minutes okay bridgette they have rested for about 10 minutes beautiful and i love that just a little bit of speckled browning on it that's all you need just slightly browned okay all right so i'm going to take one of the ones we've baked off first i'm just going to cut this in half and you know what i'm going to look for this pita better have a pocket ooh you could put a lot of lamb in there this pita has the perfect pocket i would say look at that interior beautiful lacy nice crumb soft and slightly chewy and and moist i mean that's something that you don't get again with supermarket pitas at all is that they're so dry yeah and the process was a lot of fun i couldn't have asked for a better peta professor you're a great student if you want to make these amazing pitas at home start by mixing ice water oil and honey with bread flour and yeast let it all rest then add salt and mix again divide the dough into eight pieces and refrigerate overnight coat the dough with flour shape into seven inch circles and bake them two at a time until they inflate then flip them over and bake until lightly browned let them cool for 10 minutes under a blanket and serve so from america's test kitchen the practically perfect in every way pita bread so good today we're diving into the world of international yogurts with bishop jack bishop i feel like i should be wearing like reflector sunglasses like i'm not like cool enough for this segment already well international yogurt sounds pretty mysterious yeah and they're all made in the united states are they really yes so the world of yogurt has really changed the first revolution was the introduction of greek yogurts these are strained yogurts thicker creamier lush that really transformed the yogurt landscape in the 1990s half of all the yogurt we now consume the united states is greek style oh wow it's all made here yogurt is not something you want to put on a plane and ship across sitting in customs right so dip in as we've seen all these different styles australian style yogurt bulgarian and icelandic style yogurt we wondered is there something that's even more delicious than greek yogurt i personally love greek yogurt oh wow and what do you like about this um its texture is a little bit looser and i kind of like that it's not so heavy it almost tastes like sour cream it's like i should be dipping potato chips in this so these are all whole milk they're all cow's milk um yes you'll see different cultures on the label the experts we spoke to said the biggest difference is a length of time that the yogurt is fermented and the temperature at which it's fermented and the type of cultures is not so important as the way the yogurt is cultured that's interesting so as you're tasting you're going to notice big textural differences yes that is some stiff yogurt yeah and the big thing here is whether or not the yogurt is strained oh okay so greek yogurt is strained which is why it's so much thicker and creamier than what i would call classic american style yogurt icelandic yogurt is also strained the australian yogurt and the bulgarian yogurt are not strained so in addition to textural differences which will be very obvious some of these are tartar some of them are a little bit more savory some are a little sweeter and that's really about the fermentation process interesting the texture is dramatic as you can get in yogurt from this which is downright soupy to that which is almost like wallpaper paste i actually love the flavors of all of them this last one is a bit more acidic but i could see that working in some instances this one is by far the thickest but again would be great in a dip especially if you're adding liquid ingredients like vinegar or lemon juice or lime juice it could handle that and this one this one actually might be my favorite just eating straight out of hand it is smooth it has some complexity its texture is somewhat in the middle so i'd say this is my favorite followed by these two and this one last do you want to know where we're going where we go where are we going let's go to this country first we're going very far far away we are we're going down under oh uh so again these are all made in the united states but this is australian style yogurt from a company named wallaby we thought it was actually very similar to some of the classic american style yogurts that i grew up with and you grew up with that are sort of moderately thick not too thin not too thick and the flavor is kind of middle of the road yep nice and clean not super tart not super savory just delicious all right let's go to this country so this is iceland this is very similar to the greek yogurt it's really creamy and it gets strained it's just got an amazing texture yeah it almost whipped okay this one was quite thick so this is our favorite greek yogurt by that is a strained yogurt lovely texture a little lemony a little acidic that's just a wonderful ingredient and last but not least last but not least this is the bulgarian style yogurt this looks like a mayonnaise bottle yes you pay extra i think for that bottle it is the most expensive yogurt here this one is really really thin as you saw also really funky and savory it had what i would call kind of cheesy notes and it was it was a big yogurt so there you have it in the world of international yogurts you'll find a wide variety of flavors and textures but you can't go wrong [Music] when you bake a loaf of bread you want the dough to expand as much as possible on the counter before you bake it this is called proofing to tell if your dough is ready to bake you poke it with a finger or knuckle like this if it springs back right away it needs more time if it leaves a deep indentation doesn't spring back at all you've waited too long but if it springs back slowly and leaves a slight indentation like this it's ready to go and here's why the yeast in the loaf is consuming sugars and pumping the dough with gas and the network of gluten is trapping a lot of it but not all of it some is always escaping so we need a constant supply of fresh gas as the yeast runs out of sugar the gas production slows poking at this point will leave an indent if you don't bake the loaf now it will eventually start to deflate and that is overproofed wait you know what there's a way better way to explain this this bouncy house is a lot like our bread dough and my assistant joe is demonstrating the pope test now the bouncy house is inflated by a fan run by a generator now that's our yeast as long as the fan is running the house stays inflated but as soon as the generator runs out of fuel which is our sugar it starts to deflate if joe's tries to bounce on it now it won't spring back and if we don't bake this bouncy house it's going to be completely deflated that's why the poke test is key to hitting that proofing sweet spot [Music] shakshouka is a north african dish consisting of poached eggs and a fragrant red sauce it is becoming very popular popping up on brunch menus everywhere and i was even served it on a plane recently which says a lot about shashuka and that airline and today keith's going to show us how easy it is to make it home so it's not surprising the popularity of this dish because it's really great so like you said it's from north africa what it is is eggs that are gently poached in a tomato sauce that tomato sauce is flavored with red peppers garlic a lot of warm spices it's a really simple dish to make but we found to make it fool proof it was about getting the sauce texture just right so we're going to start with a 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes that i've drained as the base of our sauce i'm just going to put this into a blender now we really like whole tomatoes because they don't have any additives in them and they break down nicely our next ingredient are roasted red peppers so i have one and a half cups of jarred roasted peppers here we've drained them it's going to go in the blender with our tomatoes okay so our next ingredient and this is one of the first key ingredients to our sauce was pita bread now you normally see shakshuka served with pita bread but actually we're going to take a little bit of that and put it in the sauce the starches from that are going to thicken the sauce and keep it nice and cohesive and a nice texture all the way through cooking so i'm just going to take about a third of one of these and i'm going to cut the remainder into wedges to serve later all right so these wedges are for serving that's for later and only one third of one of them is going in the sauce yep and i'm just going to cut these into half inch pieces and it should be about a half cup okay so a half cup that's going to go in with our other ingredients now you've also noticed that i'm putting everything into a blender here that's a little strange a lot of the recipes we found use a chunky sauce chunks of tomato chunks of red peppers but we really found in order to get those eggs cut through evenly we wanted a pureed sauce i'm going to blend this for a minute or two and get that nice and smooth now that we have our sauce base we can build the aromatics i have a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil in this 12-inch skillet we're gonna heat that over medium heat as that's heating up i'm gonna prep our garlic i have four cloves of garlic here we're actually gonna slice these today it looks like our oil is about ready it's starting to shimmer a little bit i'm going to get the garlic in there because if we get this too hot the garlic's going to go too fast so we're just going to stir this around what we want to look for is that garlic will start to get a little golden around the edges okay you can start to see that we're getting a little bit of browning here but since i have so many spices i'm gonna get them in there now before garlic gets too too dark so i have a tablespoon of tomato paste i have two teaspoons of ground coriander two teaspoons of smoked paprika teaspoon of cumin half teaspoon of table salt quarter teaspoon of pepper and a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper so we're just going to cook this with the garlic let that tomato paste brown and get a nice rust color and it should take one to two minutes our tomato paste is browned it's nice and rust colored now we can add our tomato and pepper puree to that i have another one and a half cups of roasted red peppers that have been cut into quarter inch pieces it will just give the sauce a little bit more texture okay now that this is all mixed together we're going to just reduce this down to a simmer we're going to come back and stir it occasionally it's been 10 minutes and we can check the consistency of our sauce slightly thicken you can see but as i draw that spatula through it will kind of slowly come back into that channel so i think we are ready to cook our eggs so i'm actually going to remove this from the heat i'm actually going to remove it from the burner tube because we don't want any more heat going into this as we put our eggs onto the top so i'm just going to smooth that off make a nice place for our eggs to sit i'm just going to take a spoon and make some indentations on the top of this seven indentations around the edge and one in the center to cook our eight eggs okay so i have one egg here and i'll start and i'm gonna ask you to help me crack some eggs you got it egg number eight and that goes right in the center we still have one problem is that eggs have a tendency to cook differently the whites are going to take a little bit longer to set than the yolks do so we're going to give the whites a little bit of help so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start taking this sauce and pulling it up over those whites all the way around all right what do you think i think it's interesting egg art we're going to slide this back over to our burner on medium heat so we're going to bring that up to a simmer once that's simmering and kind of bubbling over the entire surface we're going to put our lid on and cook that for about four to five minutes and we're going to come back out for four to five minutes and check to see if the eggs have started the film over if they haven't started to film over we can adjust our heat up or down and then after that initial four or five minutes we're going to cook it for another one to two minutes until the eggs are set okay getting the eggs to cook evenly in shakshuka can be tricky here's why inside a pan heat moves in convection currents the liquid at the bottom of the pan heats up and travels towards the top when the sauce is jam-packed with big pieces of red peppers and tomatoes the chunks inhibit the convection currents that transfer heat to the eggs so they cook unevenly pureeing the sauce however ensures that the eggs are surrounded by a consistently smooth fluid sauce that the convection currents can easily move through unimpeded and that's why using the blender is key to evenly cooked eggs in our shakshuka let's check on our eggs it smells great oh it looks great too so i can feel this with the back of the spoon yeah the whites are set but you can still feel that the yolks are liquidy it's going to be perfect i have a half a cup of cilantro that i'm going to sprinkle over the top here this is just chopped i'm also going to add an ounce of feta cheese that's crumbled this is about a quarter cup and i also have a quarter cup kalamata olives that have been sliced now that's a looker so i'm interested to see how you serve this so you can see that that yolk has set up and the white has set up so it's actually not that hard to get an egg out of here oh so just a large serving spoon you can kind of carve out each egg yeah and you can take some of the sauce and just fill it around it the smell is amazing okay a wedge of pita for you thank you you have to do the yolk break right oh you want that yolk to get into that sauce and enrich it so oh yeah look at that a little of that yolk on that fragrance sauce [Music] delicious oh it's so good well i watched you put a lot of spices in there but i don't taste any one of them distinctly it's just a fragrant sauce yeah it's you get a little bit of heat from the black pepper and the cayenne pepper but then you have those nice kind of sweet warm spices the coriander the cumin and the roasted flavor of those roasted red peppers that gives it a heartiness that actually i know this is served on brunch menus a lot but as i said earlier this would be an amazing tuesday night dinner keith this is delicious it's great isn't it you can see why this is so popular yeah so there you have it if you want to make shakshuka at home puree canned tomatoes roasted red peppers and pita bread into a sauce in the blender saute some garlic and spices then stir in the sauce along with some diced roast red peppers and simmer for 10 minutes make small divots in the mixture place raw eggs into the divots and spoon some of the sauce over the egg whites cover the skillet with a lid and simmer gently until the eggs are cooked through finally sprinkle with cilantro feta and olives before serving from america's test kitchen to your kitchen a great new recipe for eggs in spicy tomato and roasted red pepper sauce this is going into rotation on our house is this better than the airplane oh yeah like you have to ask great thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 93,748

Rating: 4.9286585 out of 5

Keywords: recipes, cooks illustrated, cooks country, americas test kitchen, shakshuka, pita bread, how to make pita

Id: eFo8oDAm9MI

Length: 23min 49sec (1429 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021