My mom gave my sister and I each our own copy of King Arthur Flour Whole Wheat Baking. She’s had this book since last year and has great luck with each and every recipe. So much that my sis and I kept calling her for recipes. She must have got sick of us always asking and decided we needed our own. Anyway… I very highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in whole grains and baking. You’d be surprised at how light and fluffy a lot of these recipes taste. You’d never guess they were whole wheat/grain!
Back to the recipe on hand…. Last night, I decided to try out the Whole Wheat Pita Bread recipe. I’ve heard pitas are pretty easy to make and I had some falafel and greek yogurt (that I turned into tzatziki) that I needed to use. It only took about 5 mins to mix all the ingredients together, let them rise for 1 1/2 hours while I went to the gym, then came home and whipped them out in no time!
I ate them with my falafel last night and this morning I had them again for breakfast with some scrambled egg and feta cheese. Yum!
Important Notes if you’re going to try this recipe that I found made it easier and made those little rounds get nice and puffy:
#1: Move your oven rack all the way to the bottom, closest to the heating coils.
#2: They cook quickly and require a turn mid-baking. This means you’re going to lose a lot of heat in a conventional oven from so much open/closing. I recommend upping the temp to 465 (from the recommended 450).
#3: Pre-heat your baking sheet or whatever you’re baking them on (I didn’t have the bread stone it called for, so I used a cookie sheet).
#4: Use a spatula to flip them over halfway through. Tongs don’t work (as I quickly found out after my first attempt. Silly me!
Whole Wheat Pita Bread
Makes 8 pitas
Cook Time: 5 mins each batch (cook 2 pitas per batch)
- 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 1/2 cups bread flour (I didn’t have this on hand so I used whole wheat pastry flour instead. Bread flour has more gluten and makes the texture better. Pastry flour also has a fairly high gluten content, and I felt they came out just fine)
- 1 1/2 t salt
- 1 1/2 t instant yeast (or active dry yeast dissolved into 1/4 cup of the recipe’s water)
- 1 1/4 cups warm water
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- Combine all ingredients together and mix or kneed by hand or mixer until you have a soft supple dough. About 8 minutes by hand, 5 minutes by mixer (the kitchen aid dough hook works perfectly for this!). It should feel tacky to the touch. You may need a bit more flour, but not too much.
- Cover the bowl and let rise until approx doubled in bulk, 1 1/2 hours.
- Place a baking stone on the bottom rack of your oven and preheat overn to 450 (I did it at 465 to make up for all the in and out I was going to do)
- After it’s risen, place the dough on a lightly floured surface and cut in half. Cut each half into 4 equal parts until you have 8 lumps of dough. Form each into a ball, cover and let the dough rest 10 mins. Make sure to keep the dough covered unless you’re working with it at the moment.
- After the dough has rested 10 minutes, use a rolling pin to roll out each ball into a circle approx 6 inches diameter and less than 1/4 inch thick. Use only enough flour to prevent sticking but do not over-flour. Keep the waiting dough covered as you work.
- Load 2 pitas at a time directly onto the baking stone (or in my case, an ungreased baking sheet). Bake approx 3 mins on one side, flip and bake on the other 2 additional minutes. It should take 3-4 minutes to go into full “balloon”. Turn them once when they are baking.
- Stack the warm pitas together in a kitchen towel to keep them from crisping as they cool.
- EAT THE PITAS!
Nutrition: 196 cal, 4g fat, 6g protein, 35g carb, 4g fiber.
