Pita Bread – 50% Whole Wheat

DIFFICULTY LEVEL: MODERATE-TO-DIFFICULT

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5 from 2 votes

Pita – 50% Whole Wheat

This is my recipe for super-fluffy wholesome and delicious pita bread which you won’t find in any stores!

Course Breads

Cuisine Mediterranean

Keyword Pita Bread, Whole Wheat

Prep Time 1 hour hour

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Proof & Rest 2 hours hours 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 20 minutes minutes

Servings 20

Calories 1kcal

Ingredients

Poolish

• 675 g Bread Flour 11.5% malted white flour
• 675 g Water
• 1/8 tsp Yeast
• 1/4 tsp Salt Approximately 1 g

Final Dough

• 1330 g Poolish Almost all from above
• 675 g Whole Wheat Flour I use fresh milled organic hard white spring wheat
• 20 g Vital Wheat Gluten
• 235 g Water
• 7 g Diastatic Malt
• 26 g Salt 27g total with poolish: 2% of flour weight
• 10 g Yeast
• 55 g Sugar
• 60 g Olive Oil

Instructions

• Start by making the poolish the night before. Mix by hand the flour, water, yeast and salt together. Cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 12-16 hours.  Refer to the blog post on poolish if you are not clear on how to know poolish is ready or what it’s used for.
• The following day, put 1.33kg of poolish in your mixing bowl and then add the 235g of water.
• Add the remaining ingredients and roughly mix everything together by hand until there are no bits of dry flour at the bottom and sides of the bowl.
• Use the dough hook attachment and mix on dough speed (speed 2 on KitchenAid) for about 5 minutes and then scoop out the dough and turn it over in the bowl. This way the mix is more even.
• Mix another 3-5 minutes (8-10 min total) or until you have a medium consistency dough with little gluten development. Cover in plastic wrap. Desired dough temperature 78F.
• Bulk ferment for 90 min or more depending on gluten development. Do at least 2 folds, one every 30 minutes. 
• Measure out 4oz pieces of dough and roll into tight balls. Cover in moist towels to prevent drying. Let balls rest 15 minutes.
• Flour the balls and use a rolling pin to roll out 1/8″ thick discs. Flour the discs and place on baking pan.
• Turn on oven to its hottest temperature (>500F). 
• Let rolled out discs proof covered in moist towels for 35 minutes at room temperature.
• Bake for about 3:30 min then flip with a spatula and bake another 1 min. Set on cooling rack.

Is there anything quite as wonderful as freshly baked pita pocket bread filled with your favorite hummus or meats and cheeses? I’ve been so disappointed with the supermarket fare, to say the least: “thin, flavorless, flimsy, semi-soft round crackers” would be the way I’d describe what you find in the USA. Of course you could fly to Israel and find some decent stuff, but wouldn’t it be so much easier to make it at home? And while we’re at it, how about putting some whole wheat in too? Over the last 5 years of intense trial and error, I’ve developed the perfect, fluffy, strong and delicious pita that you can make at home yourself. Go ahead and stuff them full of whatever you want, they will hold up to any challenge. Let’s get started!

Like many of my recipes, this pita bread uses a preferment called a poolish to accentuate a sweet, nutty flavor along with a hearty aroma. I’ve incorporated poolish in this recipe to also help with extensibility of the dough when you roll it out into discs. You can read more about poolish in my blog post on the topic.

Start by mixing the four magic ingredients for the poolish: water, flour, salt and yeast in a container and mix until it’s a smooth loose uniform mass. Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature (70F) for 12-16 hours.

If you are milling fresh whole wheat flour, and I recommend you do, get that ready at this point. I use organic hard white spring wheat for most of my whole wheat recipes, because it has a mild flavor with no change in texture or nutritional value compared to typical red whole wheat. My family can hardly tell I am making bread that’s 50% whole wheat when I use the “white” variety.

Keep in mind that fresh milled flour generally has a lower water content than flour you buy at the store. If you are using store-bought whole wheat flour, hold back some water and add it only if needed during your mix.

Now mix all the ingredients together. Normally when you are adding sugar and oils, it’s better to add them towards the end of your gluten development, but because it is so little (around 4% each relative to flour weight) it’s fine to add them at the beginning with everything else.

Now you can place it in your KitchenAid mixer with a dough hook and use the dough speed (speed 2 in a KitchenAid) for 5 minutes. After that time, I like to assess the dough and turn it over in the bowl so I get a more uniform mix. The dough consistency should be medium. I then mix another 3-5 minutes depending on the way the gluten is developing. If you aren’t practiced in opening a “gluten window”, this is a great skill to develop, although it does take a lot of practice to “read” correctly.

Notice in the picture above how the window tears very easily and it has little pinpoint holes throughout. At this point the dough is weak, so we could mix longer or we could add a series of folds during the bulk fermentation. The problem with mixing longer is that you oxidize the dough which negatively affects the final flavor and color. It also means you will have less time for fermentation which will negatively affect the pita’s “shelf life”. I recommend leaving the dough in the sub-optimal development stage and making up for it with a longer fermentation and multiple folds.

Now scale out 4oz pieces of dough and roll each piece into a tight ball. I like to cover the balls with a damp towel to prevent them from drying out.

Now we let things rest for a good 15 minutes. By waiting, you allow the gluten to relax and it will be a lot easier to roll out the discs. Be patient!

This is a good time to turn on your oven to it’s maximum setting. I set mine to just above 500F.

Here comes the fun part. Take each 4oz ball and coat it in flour. Move the floured ball to a clean surface and use your hand to gently press it into a flat shape. Keeping it round and even makes a difference. Now use a rolling pin to gently roll out from the center in every direction until you have a 1/8″ disc. When done, your disc should be around 6.5-7″ in diameter.

Flour the bottom of the disc and place it on a baking tray. I use perforated full sized trays. Your baking trays might be a little different, so the number of pitas that fit on each sheet will vary. I can comfortably fit 6 pitas on a full sized tray. Perforated trays really help get heat to the pitas fast. Insulated baking sheets may not perform as well for you. I also place the trays directly on a baking stone to help with rapid heat transfer. The most common reason people’s pitas don’t puff up is because the oven is not hot enough or the surface the pitas are placed on don’t transfer heat quickly.

Once all your discs are rolled out, cover them again with a damp towel and let them proof at room temperature for 35 minutes. If you proof too little, you will probably get a pita with a thick side and a paper-thin opposite side. A good quality pita has a uniform pocket size and thickness.

Now that the oven is hot, hot, hot (cannot be stressed enough 🙂 ) place your tray of pita in the oven and close the door as fast as possible to prevent heat loss. It usually takes 2 minutes before you start seeing the magic happen. By 3 minutes, your pitas should be fully puffed. I take them out after 3:30 min and flip them with a spatula. I then put them back in the oven for 1 more minute. This helps more evenly bake them.

Once out of the oven, pitas are placed on a cooling tray until room temperature. Consider letting your oven reheat to its maximum temperature between pita trays so the pitas are always hit with high heat from the very beginning of the bake.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Got Puff?

The most common issue I see with home-made pita bread is that the pita does not puff up. If a pita is not puffing up, it is almost certainly because your oven is not hot enough, you are baking using an insulated baking sheet, you aren’t using a stone to bake on or something is interfering with the transfer of high heat rapidly to the pita. Another common reason for pitas not puffing is that the disc is too thick. I think 1/8″ is good. If you go thicker, like 1/4″, you may end up with a very thick pita that has almost no pocket at all.

Uneven wall thickness

Another common problem is when the pita puffs, but one wall is super thin and the opposite wall is thick. I found this happens most when you fail to proof the final dough properly, over-proof the dough (meaning you left it way too long and the gluten started breaking down) or when your oven temperatures are really different in the top and bottom parts. Ideally, your oven would have even heat from the top and bottom. I add a baking stone on the top shelf to simulate the effect of a professional deck oven.

Burst walls

Another common problem I see with pitas is burst walls. This is where the pita puffs up so much and so quickly that the wall bursts. What you end up with is a pita with a big hole or tear in it. This could be caused by your dough being too strong (meaning you overworked it during the folding or mixing stages or you used a stronger flour with higher protein content than I did) or from your oven being too hot. You could try to slightly lower the temperature, do one less fold or use less vital wheat gluten. Another reason I see burst walls is when the initial disc is too thin. I think 1/8″ is a good thickness. If you go thinner than that, the walls will be too thin to hold the steam pressure generating inside the pocket and it will burst like a balloon.

Final thoughts: I really like using whole wheat flour whenever I can get away with it, but of course you could go 100% white flour instead. Just remember that if you are not using freshly milled whole wheat flour, you will need slightly less water than is called for in this recipe. Stay tuned for a 100% white pita recipe coming soon.

As for the sugar, you could leave it out and also use a little less water, but your pita will come out less flavorful. The amount of sugar in this recipe is really of little consequence, only 4% of the total flour weight. I am very health conscious, and even I prefer this version with a little sugar.

Finally, I can understand why not everyone has the oven capacity or need to make 20 pitas. As with all recipes, and especially those using grams, it is easy to cut this recipe in half or more.

Now go make some pitas!

Have suggestions, questions or concerns? Have you tried this recipe? How did it it work for you? Please rate this recipe and comment below.