Pita Bread - How to Make Pita Bread at Home - Grilled Flatbread

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with pita bread that's right by popular demand this is the pita bread that you saw in the taziki's ideo and unlike lots of other baked products which are quite frankly better from a bakery i mean remember the time you tried to make croissants how much but this on the other hand is so far superior homemade than the stuff you get at the grocery store it's not even close and in addition to being delicious to eat it's also extremely easy to make so we're gonna start by putting one package of yeast in the bowl of our stand mixer to that I'm gonna add one cup of very warm but not too hot water and then one cup of flour and we're gonna give that a good mix and I'm gonna let that sit there for about 15 or 20 minutes so basically we're doing kind of a very quick sponge here but mostly we're just making sure that our yeast is active and 15 minutes later if you see it bubbling like this you know you're good to go it'll start getting a little foamy kind of like the head of a beer although that's not very good analogy but you know what I just like comparing things to beer but anyway when you see those little bubbles that means your yeast is active and you're ready for the next step so at that point we're gonna go ahead and dump in some olive oil and some salt by the way this dough is actually very similar to our pizza dough recipe so go ahead and mix in the olive oil in the salt and then we're gonna add the rest of the flour but not quite all of it alright this is gonna take about 2 more cups of flour but I don't like to add it all at once a supple moist sticky dough is very important here so I'll add like three-quarters of the rest of the flour of course we're gonna use the dough hook attachments all right I'll give it a mix and then I'll take a look and as you can see here definitely too sticky still sticking to the sides of the bowl needs more flour so at that point I'll add a little at a time until I have the perfect consistency and what that is is just enough flour to make it pull away from the sides and form a very very supple very soft slightly sticky dough and when it gets to that point you want to let that need for at least five or six minutes and again you can always add flour much harder to add liquid so that's why I don't like to dump in all the flour okay so after five or six minutes of kneading mine look like this by the way my hands are lightly dusted with flour and that feels amazing you can tell when you've done a dough right it just feels incredibly supple and sexy at that point I'm going to add a few drops of olive oil to the bowl all right I'm gonna oil the surface of the dough and what we're gonna do is we're gonna cover this with foil and let it double in size that should take around two hours although no guarantees might be a little less might be a little longer but you're gonna check all right so that's what mine looked like doubled in size we're gonna remove that from the bowl onto a floured work surface go ahead and sprinkle some more flour on top and then we're gonna press it down with our hands and this is for two reasons number one we want to knock all the air out of it and number two we want it into some kind of flat shape that we can cut eight pretty equal sized pieces so that's what I did here and once you've cut your dough into eight pieces you're simply gonna form these small round loaves now don't stress out too much about this you could just roll these into a ball if you want but the official method is to kind of pull the dough from the top down and tuck it up underneath the bottom so I'm just turning the dough I'm kind of stretching the top with my thumbs tucking it up underneath and I'm just going around and around and what you'll get is a nice round shape with a very smooth top and that is it all right once your eight little rounds are formed you're gonna cover that with some plastic wrap and let it sit there for about thirty minutes and thirty minutes later it's gonna look like that yes they will rise a little bit and you can see my plastic sticking a little bit you should probably oil that first I forgot to tell you and at that point we are ready to roll our pita breads so I'm gonna take one piece of dough again I'm using a floured surface I'm gonna Pat it flat a little more flour on top not too much just enough so it doesn't stick and then we're gonna roll that out to approximately 1/4 inch thick and by the way I'm just gonna roll out one to get started here and as they're cooking I'll roll out other ones so those are resting while I'm actually grilling the first ones so that's just about perfect right there and then the last step before we grill these I want you to let that sit there for five minutes and you'll notice I'm covering the other dough with the towel so there's and dry out all right so once your rolled out pita bread has rested for five minutes we're gonna head over to the stove where I have a preheated cast-iron skillet on medium-high heat it's been lightly brushed with olive oil and we're gonna place in our pita bread and we're basically just gonna grill it for two to three minutes per side and that's really all there is to it so I'm gonna go a couple minutes on that side I'm gonna give it a flip cook it a couple more minutes on that side and then I'm gonna flip back over to the original side and you're gonna see something that hopefully you see in your pan that would be the puffin all right both sides are gonna kind of separate in the center and it's gonna fill with hot air and it's gonna puff up so I'm just giving this another 30 seconds or so on each side mostly just to show you the puffing so that's completely normal and desirable and after it's cooked for about three minutes per side and hopefully you've got a little bit of inflation we're just gonna pile those up on a plate as we cook them and that's pretty much it now what you just saw would be fairly typical of what you're gonna see in your pan although once in a while you're gonna get this that's right the full balloon some of them will just separate perfectly in the center and you'll have one big air pocket so that's kind of like your best-case scenario and I should also add that you don't have to flip back and forth as many times as I am I'm just doing this to show off my extreme puffiness and by the way don't get discouraged if you don't get the full puff you'll see when these are done the insides are gonna look great anyway so whether you get partial puff egde or full inflation you're gonna be fine and these are going to be delicious so bottom line if you grill both sides for about three minutes and it gets kind of blistered and golden-brown like that you're good that's all you need to do and once you've cooked your pitas and they're cool enough to handle you are done and you are about to experience one of the greats bread products in the history of the world and you can see here as I tear into one how those layers have separated in the center and you get that signature pocket and by the way this was the original hot pocket so it all started with this and of course the great thing about pockets they're fun to fill and for me it was to Zekey on this day but I'm sure you will have no trouble whatsoever thinking of things to stuff your pita is with oh and by the way if there's a couple listening in the audience by the names of Mary and Paul you guys should quit your jobs buy a food truck sell sandwiches made on this bread and call it pita Paul and Mary's that is a million-dollar idea right there so - Paul and Mary I say you're welcome and - the rest of you I say I really hope you give this delicious homemade flatbread a try so head over to food wishes calm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 9,128,932

Keywords: Pita, Bread, Flatbread, Grilled, chef, john, foodwishes, Food, Cooking, Kitchen, Recipe, Cooking (science), pocket, Recipes

Id: NPiA69p4gqE

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Good recipe, and Chef John always gets an up.

[u/ChaosNil]

Now teach me how to make cheap hummus and you have a happy camper!

[u/ChasedGod1]

He posted a video for Tzatziki sauce before this one. Tzatziki + Fresh Pita bread is absolutely orgasmic. You could also make some mean chicken souvlaki..

Here is the Tzatziki recipe.

[u/Eonir]

I found his voice extremely annoying, but this is a very tempting recipe.

[u/wallawalla22]

If you don't watch, Food wishes blog, and Youtube channel have taught me how to cook great meals, he usually uses high end non bulk items, but you can scale things to a smaller budget

[u/judorakpl]

The Food Wishes guy sounds like Seth Rogan. I'm going to pretend Seth Rogan is teaching me how to make cheap pita bread now.

[u/HighKickBlonde]

Nice!

[u/pe5t1lence]

Basically the same thing for naan. I like to move my pizza stone to the grill and use that.

[u/smashing_atoms]

I just had store bought pitas and these look so much better.