Make soft, fluffy Sourdough Pita Bread in your kitchen with simple ingredients you already have in your pantry. Homemade pita is so much tastier than store-bought, sourdough bread makes these freshly-baked flatbreads even better. You’ll love stuffing roasted veggies, falafel or grilled meat in the center of your pita pocket!
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What is Pita?
Pita is a leavened flatbread with a large pocket in the center. These flatbreads are usually made with wheat flour, water, salt, olive oil and leavened using yeast. It originates from the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Pita is commonly eaten with dips like hummus and Baba Ganoush or stuffed with roasted vegetables, grilled lamb or falafel.
What Makes Sourdough Pita Special?
Sourdough imparts a deep, nuanced flavor to bread and makes pita taste even better. Unlike instant yeast or active dry yeast, wild yeast ferments dough slowly. This slow fermentation allows yeast to predigest flour making it easier to digest and allows our bodies to absorb the nutrients normally locked in wheat. This makes homemade sourdough pita bread a much healthier option than anything you can buy at the grocery store.
What You Need
Bread flour: Makes for a strong dough that can expand and puff up into a pita pocket. Substitute all-purpose flour if that’s all you have.
Whole wheat flour: Whole wheat flour imparts a nutty flavor to pita bread. Substitute rye, einkorn, spelt or more bread flour if you don’t have any whole wheat in your pantry.
Active sourdough starter: For the best results, use a healthy active starter.
Water: Use warm water (80 to 96 F) to encourage the fermentation process.
Salt: Use sea salt or kosher salt for the best results.
Olive oil: Softens gluten which results in fluffy, pillowy pita. Substitute coconut oil, vegetable oil or grapeseed oil.
How to Get a Pita Pocket
The most sought-after feature of a pita is the pocket, perfect for stuffing meats, falafel, veggies, or cold cuts into. Here are my top tips for success:
Use an active sourdough starter: Since this is a naturally-leavened dough, the success of this bake depends highly on the health and activity of your starter. As pita dough bakes in the oven, yeast die off in the extreme heat and rapidly produce carbon dioxide. This causes the dough to puff up and a pocket to form.
Create strength in the dough: To form a good pocket, your dough should be able to expand without tearing. Knead the dough thoroughly to form strong gluten bonds. This also helps ensure you’ll bake fluffy bread.
Roll the dough out thinly: Flatten the dough out into a ¼-inch thick disc. Thin dough allows heat to penetrate into the center quickly, creating a blast of steam that makes the dough to puff up like a balloon. Thick dough will dry out and firm up too much as it bakes in the extreme heat of the oven preventing it from expanding into a pocket.
Bake in a very hot oven: The extreme heat of the oven causes a quick burst of steam inside the dough, forming a large pita pocket. If your oven temperature is too low, water won’t evaporate quickly enough, a pocket won’t form and the dough will dry out as it bakes.
Use a baking stone (optional but highly recommended): Baking stones retain and conduct heat better than a regular baking sheet. So dough gets a blast of heat as soon as it’s set on a hot baking surface. This makes the water evaporate rapidly, causing the dough to puff up and separate into a pocket. If you don’t have a stone, use an upside-down cast-iron skillet set on the bottom rack of the oven.
How to Make Homemade Pita Bread
1. Dissolve sourdough starter and whole wheat flour in warm water
2. Fold the bread flour in a third at a time, knead mixture until it forms a shaggy dough
3. Knead the olive oil into the dough
4. Working in the bowl, knead the dough until smooth
5. Allow the dough to rise for 4 to 6 hours or until bubbly and doubled in volume
6. Divide the dough into 10 portions, round the dough into tight balls and proof covered overnight on a heavily floured plate
7. Using a rolling pin flatten one portion of dough on a piece of parchment paper into a 5-inch disc
8. Bake the pitas in 500 F oven on the baking stone for 2 to 3 minutes
Recipe FAQs
Sourdough is healthier than yeast bread because of long fermentation. Bread made using instant yeast or active dry yeast usually proofs in 1 to 2 hours, while naturally-leavened bread takes around 4 to 6 hours. Because we lack the enzymes to fully digest wheat, humans can’t absorb all the nutrients in wheat, this is what makes bread so unhealthy. The long fermentation period, predigests flour, making sourdough bread much easier to digest and enabling us to absorb the vitamins normally locked in grains.
Flatbread serves as a catch-all term for bread that doesn’t require any special shaping and can be baked or fried flat. Naan, fry bread, scallion pancakes, and even focaccia can all be considered flatbread. These breads can be leavened using baking soda, baking powder or yeast. Meanwhile, pita is the name of a bread that originates in the Mediterranean, it is commonly leavened using yeast and has a characteristic pocket in the center.
The main reason your pitas may have turned out rubbery is the activity and health of your sourdough starter. If your starter is not active enough, it may not be able to make your dough rise. Make sure you use a bubbly, mature starter and watch out for signs of fermentation in your dough. Before shaping, your dough should feel airy and have doubled in volume.
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Sourdough Pita Bread
Equipment
- Parchment paper
- Rolling Pin
- baking stone
Ingredients
- 75 grams sourdough starter mature and active
- 226 grams water
- 80 grams whole wheat flour
- 240 grams all-purpose flour
- 6 grams salt
- 14 grams olive oil
Instructions
- Make the dough: Combine the water, sourdough starter and whole wheat flour in a large mixing bowl. Stir until the starter is completely dissolved.75 grams sourdough starter, 226 grams water, 80 grams whole wheat flour
- Fold the all-purpose flour into the sourdough starter a third at a time. This will ensure all of your flour is properly hydrated and incorporated into your mixture. Add salt and stir until no dry bits of flour remain and a shaggy dough forms.240 grams all-purpose flour, 6 grams salt
- Knead the olive oil into the dough until it's completely absorbed. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest in a warm place for 30 minutes.14 grams olive oil
- Knead the dough: Knead the dough in the bowl until completely smooth, about 3 to 5 minutes.
- Bulk ferment: Round the dough into a tight ball, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 4 to 6 hours.
- Pre-shape: Once the dough has risen, turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into 10 portions. Round each ball of dough into a tight ball, set the dough on a heavily floured plate, spaced apart with room to spread.
- Cold proof: Cover the plate with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator overnight (up to 16 hours).
- Prep: If using, place a baking stone on a rack positioned at the very bottom of your oven. Preheat your oven to 500 F for at least 1 hour (or as long as your baking stone normally needs to heat up).
- Cut out ten 6-inch squares of parchment paper (this will make rolling your dough out and transferring them to the oven much easier).
- Shape: Working with one portion at a time, brush off all the excess flour from the dough. Place the dough in the center of a piece of cut parchment.
- Using a rolling pin, flatten the dough out into a 5-inch disc, about ¼-inch thickness.
- Set the shaped dough aside, and repeat with the remaining portions. You can stack the dough on top of each other.
- Bake: With the parchment paper, transfer the dough to the baking stone. Bake only 3 at a time.
- Bake for 2 to 3 minutes or until the pita puffs up, and looks dry and lightly browned. Transfer the baked pita to a serving platter and cover with a dry, clean tea towel.
- Enjoy: These pitas are best enjoyed freshly baked.
- Store: Store any leftover pitas in a zip-top bag at room temperature for up to 3 days. Reheat the pitas on a dry, preheated skillet for 2 to 3 minutes.
Make It Dough says
Oh no! I'm sorry these didn't work for you, Erin. So sad to hear when this happens.
Dorothy's New Vintage Kitchen says
These look perfect!