How to Make the Best Pita Bread at Home – Perfect for Any Occasion

Pita bread is a soft, fluffy, delicious Middle Eastern flatbread. Made from wheat flour, yeast, sugar, salt, water, and olive oil, pita is a staple food across the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean regions. Pita is popular in countries like Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Greece, among many other others.

The key element in pita, as Erez tells us, is the airy central pocket that puffs up when you bake it. Baking homemade pita bread at a high temperature creates steam, causing the dough to puff up into a pita pocket. These airy pockets are perfect for inserting ingredients into – like for making a pita sandwich, or as a dip for your delicious hummus.

Pita is a bread with prehistoric roots. Experts believe that pita-like flatbreads originated in the Stone Age, thousands of years ago, when the Natufian people made flatbread from cereal grains. Several millennia later, bread was very important to the ancient Babylonians of Mesopotamia, where the earliest written records and recipes related to bread-making have been found. 

Flatbreads prominent in North Africa and Asia were once utilized as eating utensils so that people didn’t have to use their hands. These breads, cooked in a clay or metal oven called a tinûru (also known as a tannur or tandoor), were commonly baked in households long ago, and were similar to present-day taboon and tandoor breads.

Food historians don’t know when steam-puffed pita bread was invented. But today, pita and yeast leavened flatbreads are some of the world’s most widely-consumed breads because they are tasty as well as cheap and easy to make.

Pita breads are healthy because they are low in calories and rich in fiber, vitamin B6, and many important minerals like magnesium, phosphorus, selenium, manganese, and iron. 

Homemade pita breads are also low in cholesterol and saturated fat, making them healthy for your heart. Homemade pita bread can be eaten either warm or cold and keeps very well in an airtight bag.

Pita bread is the perfect accompaniment to so many of your favorite meals. Pita pockets fresh out of the oven can be split open and used as wraps to hold all sorts of fillings. Pitas are traditionally stuffed with falafel, salads, and grilled meats and are excellent to eat with kebabs or with chicken shawarma sandwiches. Baked pita makes a great dip for hummus, tahini, masabacha, baba ganoush, harissa, and tzatziki sauce. 

Many Israeli breakfasts and lunches aren’t complete without pita bread. While certain pita breads are great for sandwiches, Greek pita bread lacks a pocket and is more commonly used to make dishes like souvlaki.

Leftover pita can be baked into pita chips, transformed into salad croutons, or repurposed into pizza dough. In his lesson, Erez uses his pita dough recipe as a base for sficha, a Middle Eastern pizza topped with lamb and fire-roasted tomatoes, as well as for manakeesh, a Lebanese flatbread Erez smothers in a fragrant homemade za’atar spice blend.

• Need to Knead: Knead the dough with a wave-like motion for a full 8 minutes. If you feel yourself getting tired, let the dough rest for a minute while the gluten develops, and then continue. Also, make sure you let the dough rise for enough time.
• High Gluten Flour Power: Bread flour, or focaccia flour, is higher in protein than regular all-purpose flour and is best for pita making. The extra gluten will ensure wonderful elasticity and the puffiest pita possible. While you can use whole wheat flour or gluten-free flour, the best results are with high gluten bread flour.
• Flames on Fire: If a wood-fired taboon isn’t part of your kitchen arsenal, don’t despair. A hot oven preheated to its maximum temperature works fine, too. Just remember: If your pitas won’t puff, it probably means the temperature is too low. But don’t fret too much: our pita recipe will still yield a delicious taste.