How To Make Good Pita Bread?

Freshly baked pita bread

My name is Ofer Heijmans and I am a fairly experienced home baker and I live in Israel. I bake all of our sourdough breads, mill my own flour etc. However there’s one thing I didn’t bake: Pita bread. My kids really love Pita bread and we used to buy those in our local supermarket until one day I decided that it’s a shame I bake everything else but not pita bread and so it’s time to just bake the pita bread too. No problem. How hard can it be?

Well.. it turned out that creating a “below average” pita is super simple. Just follow any one of the hundreds of recipes online and you’re done. There’s only one problem — 90% of the time they look great coming out of the oven but they come out with one side paper thin. It drove me nuts.

Consistently creating a good, puffy pita where the air pocket is evenly distributed between the sides turned out quite more challenging than I expected. I went down the rabbit hole of trying to nail a good pita and can confidently say I can now make decent pitas in my home oven. I make 24 pitas every week or so (yes, we consume alot of them :)

So, what’s the secret ingredient? the silver bullet that fixes everything?

Unfortunately, there is none. There’s no one little secret thing you do or add which makes it work. It’s actually a combination of dough handling techniques and baking techniques which gets you there. I’ll try to explain as best as I can what exactly I do so that perhaps you can do it as well.

Stage 1: Mixing the dough

The flour used in the dough includes over 93% bread flour, personally I use T45 (or T65) flour as that is the main flour I have lying around most of the time but any bread flour or all purpose flour will do. I tried playing around with various amounts of whole wheat and rye as I prefer having at least 40%–50% whole wheat in my doughs but came to the conclusion that pita bread just needs every bit of gluten it can get to create a balanced air pocket and so anything less than 93% of white flour has a negative effect on the pita. My recipe for the dough:

**Recipe For 8 pitas:**
550gr Bread flour / AP Flour / T45 flour
40gr Whole wheat flour
360gr Water
10gr Olive oil
15gr Sugar
12gr Salt
3gr Dry yeast

The mix itself is pretty straight forward, just put the water and oil along with the yeast in the mixing bowl first, then add the flour and lastly the salt and sugar and start mixing. I mix first on slow speed for a couple of minutes and then on high speed for 5 minutes. If you wish you can check for a window pane.

Stage 2: Bulk fermentation

Once the mix is complete, put the dough into a container at room temperature (if you are in a cold place put the container somewhere warm (ideally ~26c) and wait for it to at least double in size.

Stage 3: Divide & Pre-shape (+ Oven preheat)

Once the dough has doubled in size, usually around 2–2.5 hours in my kitchen, it is time to divide it. But before this stage, take a moment to start the oven. Set the heat to max and put in a baking steel at the top 1/3rd of the oven. Now that the oven is heating up take the dough out of the container and start dividing it into ~123gr blobs. Please use a scale here, as it is crucial each pita is not less than 120gr, ideally 123gr.

Dividing the dough into 123gr blobs. Please use a scale for this

Once you have divided your dough it’s time to roll the blobs into small round balls and let them rest while covered. You can use a towel to cover or a baking cloth or whatever you have handy.

Rolling the dough blobs into round balls

Important note: when dividing and shaping the dough do not use flour!!
if the dough is a bit sticky (in my case it sometimes is) you can keep you hands a bit damp and this will allow you to handle the dough without it sticking to your hands. Do not overdo the damp part, you want to have your hands just ever so slightly damp and not more than absolutely necessary. Let the dough balls rest for at least 15–20 minutes but no more than 30 minutes. We want the gluten to relax to allow us to use the rolling pin in the next stage.

Pita dough balls have rested and are ready for final shaping

Stage 4: Final Shaping (+Turning the Oven Broiler/grill)

After the dough balls have rested it is now time for the actual shaping of the pita. Just before this though, we want to turn on the oven broiler (sometimes called Grill) function in addition to the other heating elements. Refer to your oven modes to see how to turn this mode on.

Now, we can start the shaping part: my experience is while the previous stages were important, this stage and of course the next one are the most critical stages of the entire process. In this stage we are rolling the dough balls into a pita bread shape. Consistency & precision in thickness is key here, and so to help with this stage I use 0.5cm (~1/4 Inch) spacer-sticks.

My spacer sticks are 0.5cm in width

Spacer sticks layout on table

Here’s how I use them:

1. Flour the top of the dough ball and the rolling surface.
2. Drop the dough ball upside down onto the floured rolling surface
3. flour the bottom side of the dough ball (which is now facing up)
4. place the spacers on either side of the dough ball, so that your rolling pin can roll on top of the sticks.
5. Use a rolling pin to go back & forth either once or twice (but not more) over the dough ball. It should now be in an eclipse like shape.
6. flip and rotate the dough ball 90 degrees making sure it moves freely and is not sticking.
7. Use a rolling pin to go back & forth either once or twice (but not more) over the dough ball. It should now be in a circular ptta-bread shape, with a perfect 0.5cm thickness. If it’s not a perfect circle it is also fine.
8. pick up the ptta from the rolling surface, and place it upside down on a sheet of baking paper, covered with a towel so that the pitas won’t dry out.

Repeat 1–7 with all 8 pitas. I can fit 4 pitas on a single baking paper (parchment paper) and so I end up with 2 baking papers with 4 pitas on each on my kitchen counter.

Flatten the pita with your hand first by patting it a bit

Roll out the pita once or twice in each direction, not more

Pita in its signature circular form after rolling. It doesn’t have to be a perfect circle.

Cover the pitas with a towel (I am using a baking cloth)

I fit 4 pitas on a single baking paper. Let them rest before baking

Stage 5: The bake

If everything was done correctly, the pitas of the first batch of 4 have had about 5–6 minutes to rest while you were shaping the second batch of pitas. This rest is important and I would recommend allowing it to rest for 10 minutes (which means you wait a few more minutes before baking the first batch). You don’t want to put the pitas in the oven without this rest.

Baking pitas requires extreme heat, and preferably from both sides of the dough. I’ve experimented with many techniques and found that what works best for me is to put the baking steel on the top 3rd part of the oven and then get the baking steel extremely hot, then have the broiler (grill) work in addition to the top/bottom heating elements as it provides the required extra heat. This calls for (in my oven) for 45 minutes of max heat and then about 5–10 minutes more of having the broiler on.

My oven layout with the baking steel on the top 3rd rack. The broiler is working.

In the previous stage we turned on the broiler (grill) so we should have both the baking steel and oven screaming hot. So now it is time to bake:

1. Insert the baking paper with 4 pitas and put it directly on the baking steel.
2. Wait about 1.5 minutes for the pitas to start puffing ever so slightly (do not let the puff up completely)
3. Open the oven, flip the pitas upside down (I use my hand, but be careful, the pitas are hot) and put them back onto the baking paper.
4. Wait for the pitas to puff up, usually about 30–45 seconds and then take them out.
5. Put the baked pitas on a cooling rack, but covered with a towel (or baking cloth).
6. Bake the next batch in the same way.

To assist with the baking process, I use a cardboard cut to the size of my baking paper which allows me to slip the baking paper quickly and safely onto the baking steel:

Cardboard cut to the size of my baking paper

I put the cardboard underneath the baking paper with pitas and then use it to transfer the baking paper with pitas onto the baking steel:

Slip the baking paper onto the cardboard and from there insert onto the baking steel

Here’s a picture of what my pitas look like when they just hit the oven vs when it is time to flip them. They are just starting to gain some volume but have not puffed up yet ***EDIT: I have recently conducted a set of experiments and have noticed consistently that NOT flipping them yields a better outcome!! so please note I do not flip them anymore:

Pitas just put in the oven

Ready to flip . Notice they have puffed just a bit. This usually takes 60 seconds or slightly less ***EDIT: I DO NOT flip them anymore, see my comment above***

Then once flipped, I wait for them to puff up and take them out ***EDIT: I DO NOT flip them anymore, see my comment above just wait for them to puff up ***:

Pitas puffed and ready to be taken out of the oven

Once taken out I transfer them to a cooling rack covered with a baking cloth (or towel) to trap steam and make them soft:

Pitas fresh out of the oven

I cover each batch of pitas with a baking cloth (or a towel) and put on a cooling rack to trap steam and make them soft (but not soggy)

Finally, after 20–30 minutes they are ready to either consume right away or to store in the freezer. They keep very well:

A freshly baked pita, with same sized width on either side of the pocket.

Some random notes:

1. Some people use a specialized pita-baker tool for this but I prefer using the oven as it allows me to bake 4 pitas at a time instead of one after the other.
2. Sourdough: I’ve tried leavening the dough with sourdough instead of yeast (adjusted the recipe to accommodate it) and have gotten degraded results. I did this with multiple versions of sourdough and didn’t yet managed to get the same results with sourdough as I get with yeast. It’s still work in progress though.