Organic Wheat Pita

Instructions

Mixing:

1. Combine all of the ingredients (except oil for brushing), and mix and knead them together—by hand, mixer, or bread machine—to make a smooth dough. This will take about 8 minutes by hand, 5 minutes in an electric mixer, or use the dough setting on your bread machine.
2. Cover the dough, and allow it to rise till it’s doubled in bulk, about 60-90 minutes. Toward the end of the rising time, start to preheat your oven to 450°F, with a pizza stone on the bottom shelf, if you have one.

Shaping:

1. Gently deflate the dough, and divide it into eight pieces, shaping each piece into a rough ball. Let the balls rest for 10 minutes, covered, while your oven comes up to temperature.
2. Lightly spray a rolling mat, or clean work surface, with non-stick vegetable oil spray. Use a rolling pin to roll one ball of dough into a 6” circle that’s slightly less than ¼” thick. Repeat with another ball of dough. (Tip: roll the dough out to about 7″ and it will shrink back to about 6″.)

Baking:

1. Carefully flop the pitas onto the hot pizza stone, or place them on an ungreased baking sheet, and put the baking sheet on the bottom rack of the oven. Bake the pitas for 4 to 5 minutes, till they puff up. (They’ll puff up more on a baking stone.)
2. Turn them over, and bake for another minute or two; total baking time should be about 6 minutes (about 7 minutes, if you’re baking on a pan rather than a stone).
3. Remove them from the oven, stack them on a kitchen towel, and fold the towel up over them; this will keep them from becoming crisp as they cool. Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough.

Note: Baking pitas on a hot stone produces a more reliable “ballooning” effect than baking them on a baking sheet. They’ll usually balloon when you use a baking sheet, but not always. It helps if your oven is 450°F; don’t let the temperature edge down below that.

Store pitas at room temperature in a bag or closed container.