Homemade Pita Bread Recipe (2024)

The pan you cook these on has to be very hot when you place the dough or it won't puff properly. Give the pan about a minute in the oven by itself to re-heat between pitas.

Hello everyone! Along with not rolling too thin, if you want perfect pockets you should fill a spray bottle with water to mist them. When you toss one into the oven, just spray it once or twice. This will ensure even and consistent puffing of the bread. Additionally, if you lay tin foil on the inside of your warming towel it will allow your bread to remain as soft as possible because it traps in the steam from each.

Another rising tip: I was having a hard time getting mine to rise in the oven - they'd kind of half pop then give up - then I tweaked my rolling technique. Instead of flipping the dough occasionally while rolling, I kept the bottom on the bottom and just rotated the dough. Maybe obvious, but that seemed to help!

People always say you should let dough rise in a warm place. Newsflash-dough will rise even in the fridge. I put mine in the fridge & let it rise overnight. Slow rise brings out richer flavor. Not necessary to "punch down dough" & I'm not being politically correct. Just put the dough on the counter & divide it. Note that no one ever explains why punching is nec., bc it's not.

I did not have ww flour, so used all unbleached flour and these turned out perfectly beautiful. Very delicious, too. Very easy on the hands for those that may suffer from arthritis.

Stove top baking: Pinch off 3 oz of dough and roll out between oiled parchment paper almost to the edges. Cut off parchment paper to 1/4 inch. Heat lightly oiled cast iron skillet until just smoking, take off the top parchment paper and put dough in pan still on bottom parchment. Quickly mist with water and put on a lid. Wait 20 seconds, mist, & cover. In a minute, turn the pita, take off the parchment, mist & cover. Quick & easy. Dough will keep for a week or more.

The punch down/ steps associated with kneading and shaping all contribute to gluten development and the size/ shape of the air pockets you develop in the dough, which is this particular bread the pocket is a pretty big deal. Many explain why letting the gas out (punching) is necessary, because it is. You can accomplish shaping and creating consistent or airy crumb in a number of ways though-- feel free to not call it punching down.

This is a great recipe! I used a cast iron griddle in the oven, preheating it with the oven, and it worked beautifully. The bread puffed up like magic, and it was delicious.

Love love love. This makes a great accompaniment to Sam Sifton’s Chicken Shawarma recipe. Sometimes I add cilantro, paprika, black pepper or other herbs to the pita dough before shaping and cooking. For cooking, I use a cast iron skillet that I pre-heat in the oven. I then place it on the stovetop and when the skillet cools, I just turn on the burner (low) and continue cooking. It’s much more efficient and I get great results every time. This is my staple pita recipe!

In case anyone is intimidated, don't be! I mixed all of the ingredients at first so missed the step of letting yeast get frothy. I let it rise in the fridge for 48 hrs. I didn't let it come to room temperature or rise again before rolling out, but I still had large fluffy pockets! I did warm up the baking sheet with the oven and baked exactly as instructed, three minutes each, and I didn't over knead. Happy baking!

They come out perfectly every time! I put my pizza stone on the grill, crank it up to high, and the pitas are done in no time. Keeps the heat out of the house, too, and easier than trying to flop the dough inside a burning oven.

This recipe worked out great. I used a cast iron skillet to cook the pitas, instead of the cookie sheet that was suggested. I also added a small tray of cold water (ice works even better) to the oven while preheating/cooking to ensure my oven was steamy, which helped the pitas puff up beautifully!

Surprisingly easy to make, and lots of fun to see it puff. Warning . . . follow directions not to brown pita . . . and don't roll too thin . . . easy to overbake, then it becomes crispy, and not soft and flexible as it should be.

I am a bit confused about this recipe. If you were to exclude the 1/2 cup reserved flour, the dough will be ~83% hydration. Do you mean it to be this wet? At 83% hydration kneading becomes quite difficult. My calculations are based off the weights you listed.

These were soo good. I came up with six pita breads rather than eight, but that was just right for us. So delicious with Mediterranean roasted vegetables and some crumbled feta.

Tastes amazing - too keep fluffiness do not roll these out, gently press them with your fingers and pull out n the edges to make a disc shape, then cook on medium high heat in pan on the stove.

I got good result flavor-wise, but the behavior in the oven was not as good as I wished. The first two puffed up nicely and made nice pockets. The rest did not fully inflate. I also thought I’d see more browning, but I had to leave them in quite a while longer than 10 seconds to get a little brown. Any thoughts on how I might do better next time?

Well, the funny thing is that I was logging on here to say this is a nice recipe, comes together fast, nice and soft, puffed up beautifully- but that it lacked flavor and needed salt. And then - I read through the recipe again and realized that I had somehow managed to completely forget the salt and olive oil. So my review now is that this is an amazing recipe-- so good, it even works when you forget key ingredients!

I don’t know what I did wrong here. Yeast foamed, mixed dough, needed with kneading hook in mixer as directed. Dough doubled in size, rolled them out and when they baked they didn’t puff at all. I heated the baking sheet beforehand and they were like ever so slightly browned versions of what they looked like before I put them in the oven. Lot of time with the resting and rolling for no payoff.

I must be the only one who was totally confused with Step 1s directions. I added the flour to the yeast without letting it bloom for 15min! Lol I had to redo do the entire step. That Step needs to be written better. But, I’m a novice bread baker and was following it by how it was written.

Using a steel on top of the burners for this is awesome. I make mine with Supersprout Whole wheat four and the taste is so much better. Freshly milled flour will also make a huge difference.If you can wait, putting the dough in the fridge for a day or 2 will also enhance the flavour.I was instructed to roll them from the middle outwards to ensure the puff.

I have always purchased store bought. I just made Pita for my first time and they are amazing !

I put these in my wood-fired pizza oven after making some pizza. Oven temp itself was probably under 600 by then, but the stone was still super hot. They cooked beautifully in about a minute, with a full pocket in each one! The dough is easy to make, and they freeze really well.

If heating a big oven is too much for a small pita, this works just as well in a stove top cast iron frying pan.

Note 31grams = 1/4 cup for the first measure

@Mike, I’m in Germany also. I use the yeast conversion chart on dovesfarm.co.uk to convert dry, instant, & fresh yeast. The problem is when recipes are listing yeast in tablespoons rather than being consistent with metric measurements. Typically a teaspoon of dry or instant yeast is 3-4 g & equates to 10 g of fresh yeast. So for this recipe with 2 teaspoons of dry yeast, use 20 g of fresh yeast (dissolve the fresh yeast in liquid as you typically do).

Please NYT Cooking … use metrics consistently, even with smaller amounts. Mixing up grams for larger amounts, such as grams for the flour in this recipe with teaspoons for the yeast isn’t helpful for those of us using scales. Please list both tsp/Tbsp with the grams equivalents. Being inclusive of cooking measurements is great; please follow through fully.

If your recipe uses Kosher salt by volume, then you must state the manufacturer. Morton’s and Diamond Crystal have different densities and as a result their volumetric amounts will be different. The solution - weigh your salt.

Instead of baking mine in a pan, I set the oven at 500F and lay them on a cookie rack to bake. The rack allows me to bake 2 or 3 at a time. They puff up beautifully.