I love making pita bread and am always looking for ways to improve the ones I make at home. One of the most difficult things to get in a home-made pita is a nice pocket. The next hardest thing is getting that pocket to have even wall thickness.
Major variables are how thin your dough is rolled out, the heat distribution in your oven and of course the properties of the dough itself. You can refer to the “troubleshooting” section at the bottom of this post for those details.
For today’s experiment, I wanted to see if allowing rolled out pita dough to dry uncovered made any difference in how it performed in the oven. The idea was that if proofed pita dough is moist, it is more likely to expand rapidly in the oven and tear. Or it could contribute to an especially thin wall because of that rapid expansion.
I did three variations for my experiment. One batch was left uncovered during the final proof for 45 minutes, a second batch was covered with a damp towel to keep the skin moist, and a third batch was covered with a damp towel for half the proof time (23 minutes).
The result was that the pitas left to dry uncovered during the entire 45 minute proof had the most evenly thick pocket. The ones left uncovered for half the time were the next best, followed by the ones left moist throughout the entire proof. 100% of the pitas inflated properly regardless of how they were handled for the experiment.
My conclusion was that leaving pita dough out to dry during the entire final proof yields positive results.
Have a question, comment or your own experience with this? Please comment below.