Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Pita!!

Not of the Hunger Games variety.
So, yesterday was shawarma. Today I talk about how I discovered my oven could get up to five hundred degrees.
It was deliberate.
We made pita bread, to put our delicious shawarma and tahini spread into. Using this lovely recipe we discovered on epicurious.com, we successfully made a double recipe of sixteen lovely light brown puffy hollow pita pockets :)


  • 1 (1/4-ounce) package active dry yeast (2 1/2 teaspoons)
  • 1 teaspoon honey
  • 1 1/4 cups warm water (105–115°F)
  • 2 cups bread flour or high-gluten flour, plus additional for kneading
  • 1 cup whole-wheat flour
  • 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • Cornmeal for sprinkling baking sheets (I just lightly rubbed flour over the sheets)



  • As far as the steps, we followed this recipe pretty religiously and it worked wonders. It's a bit long and involved, but I looked through several recipes and it is not at all the longest or most involved of all the recipes even just on the front page.
    As far as the recipe, we used an even half and half mixture of unbleached flour and whole wheat flour, and simply used three cups of it.
    Well, we used six, because we doubled the recipe.
    It was a lot of pita.
    We planned on having a lot of leftovers.
    It's not quite going as planned.

    Regardless, the recipe goes as follows.

    "Stir together yeast, honey, and 1/2 cup warm water in a large bowl, then let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. (If mixture doesn't foam, discard and start over with new yeast.)While yeast mixture stands, stir together flours in another bowl. Whisk 1/2 cup flour mixture into yeast mixture until smooth, then cover with plastic wrap and let stand in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk and bubbly, about 45 minutes. Stir in oil, salt, remaining 3/4 cup warm water, and remaining 2 1/2 cups flour mixture until a dough forms.Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead, working in just enough additional flour to keep dough from sticking, until dough is smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes. Form dough into a ball and put in an oiled large bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour."



    Punch down dough and cut into 8 pieces. Form each piece into a ball. Flatten 1 ball, then roll out into a 6 1/2- to 7-inch round on floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Transfer round to 1 of 2 baking sheets lightly sprinkled with cornmeal. Make 7 more rounds in same manner, arranging them on baking sheets. Loosely cover pitas with 2 clean kitchen towels (not terry cloth) and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

    -----Set oven rack in lower third of oven and-----

    -----remove other racks-----


     

    Preheat oven to 500°F.

    Transfer 4 pitas, 1 at a time, directly onto oven rack. Bake until just puffed and pale golden, about 2 minutes. Turn over with tongs and bake 1 minute more. Cool pitas on a cooling rack 2 minutes, then stack and wrap loosely in a kitchen towel to keep pitas warm. Bake remaining 4 pitas in same manner. Serve warm."

     
    mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm tastey.
     mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm tastier.


     tahini sauce.

    Shawarma chicken. Best stuff in the whole world, in my humble opinion. I will definitely be repeating this experience.
    Tomorrow or the next day, I will be posting art! Yay!

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