“If you’ve only ever had dry supermarket pita,” writesAlon Shayain his eponymous2018 cookbook, “this is a different animal entirely: puffed up like a pillow, savory on its own, and ready to scoop upanything you like.”
That’s not to say that all supermarket pita is bad, just that, well, bad supermarket pita definitely exists. Which is a travesty, really, since the path to good fresh pita is not all that difficult. In fact, according to Shaya, if you’ve ever madepizza doughat home, you can just as easily make pita. And if you’ve never done either?沙亚的食谱will take care of both—having studied with pizzaiolos in Italy and run several Italian restaurants before returning to his roots in Israeli cooking, Shaya uses the same dough for both iconic breads. “At the end of the day,” he told me in a recent phone call, “it’s a few basic ingredients”—flour, water, yeast—and any dough that you like for one will probably work “very well for the other.”
The big differences, Shaya says, are in the way that the dough—after it’s mixed, rested, and risen—is shaped and prepped for the oven.
For the full fluffy details, I asked Shaya to share his best tips on how to make pita bread at home. For his essential technique—and true hand-slapping tricks—read on.
What’s the best flour for making pita?
Alon Shaya:I thinkKing Arthur bread flouris a really good brand. But I would urge people to look for local, artisanal flours to use too. At the restaurant [Sabain New Orleans], we have flour milled for us by local millers who get fresh wheat from a variety of small farms. It’s this really beautiful, high-quality flour that’s full of life and all of its natural minerals.
Joe Sevier:What would you suggest for people who don’t have access to a local mill or farmers market where they could find a similar product?
AS:Anson Millsis my favorite online source for beautiful flour.
JS:And what flour outside of white bread flour would you recommend for pita?
AS:We put a littlerye flourin our dough at the restaurant, which adds a lot of really great flavor. Rye is very low gluten so using just a small percentage—about 5% of the total amount of flour[that’s about 27 grams or a scant ¼ cup of the total flour called for in Shaya’srecipe]—adds flavor, while the high-protein bread flour creates the dough structure.
What are the critical moments of pita making?
AS:The first important step is the autolyse period, which is where you mix a small amount of the flour, the yeast, and a good amount of the water. This step allows the flour to hydrate and begins the formation of gluten. It’s a critical step because it really builds strength in the dough.