Easy Homemade Pita Bread

This soft, fresh pita has a naturally formed pocket, perfect for stuffing with your favorite Greek fillings. It doesn’t even bear comparison with store-bought pita, which is usually tough and bland.

Once you’ve had fresh pitas, you’ll never go back to buying them store-bought again!

The process is not too hard either. You’ll be surprised how easily it comes together. And it’s so satisfying to watch them puff up in the oven to create that classic pocket in the middle.

My large crew devours these, so I always double the recipe. Even then, they’re usually gone in one meal.

Once they’ve used one pita for the obligatory souvlaki-filled sandwich, our favorite way to eat the remaining pitas is with butter and honey. Yum!

Make the dough

Making pitas begins with mixing the dough. A stand mixer makes the process much easier, but it’s certainly possible to knead by hand.

First, a few notes about the ingredients. The basic bread ingredients of water, yeast, salt, and flour are enhanced by adding a little bit of whole wheat flour for texture and olive oil for softness.

Freshly milled whole wheat flour will give you the best flavor results. If you don’t have a wheat grinder, try to source high-quality whole wheat flour and store it in the freezer to keep it from turning rancid.

The relatively large amount of olive oil is important to this recipe to keep the dough (and the bread) soft. Good quality extra virgin olive oil will give the best flavor.

On to the process.

I like to cut corners whenever I can get away with it. There’s always way too much to do and never enough time. I don’t have time to sit around waiting for my yeast to prove. So I chuck it all in together. I’ve never had an issue with it.

First, add the water, yeast, salt and oil to the bowl of a stand mixer.

Note: My stand mixer can easily handle this recipe doubled because it’s a pretty soft dough. More than doubled overwhelms the mixer.

Give the mixture a little swirl with a whisk or a fork to distribute everything evenly.

Next add the whole wheat flour and mix again for good measure.

Finally, add 2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour and mix for four minutes on the knead setting. About a minute into that mix time, you should start to see the dough forming into a ball on the dough hook.

If it’s sticking mostly to the edges or on the bottom of the bowl, add more flour, 1 Tablespoon at a time (up to 1/2 cup more).

The texture of the dough should be somewhat sticky but not so much so that it’s too slack.

Take the dough off the dough hook and return to the mixing bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel, and allow to rise in a warm place for at least 1 hour or until it has domed nicely.

Roll out the dough

When your dough is ready, preheat the oven to 475°F with a ceramic baking tile on the middle rack. I have a round pizza stone, but a square or rectangular baking tile would work even better. A cookie sheet or cast iron pan would also work, potentially with less consistent results.

Turn out the dough onto a well-floured surface. Cut it into six roughly equal pieces. It doesn’t need to be exact.

I do this by cutting the large lump of dough in half and then cutting each half into three pieces. This has proven to give the most even results.

Take each piece of dough and stretch the edges around to tuck under the bottom to form a smooth ball. You don’t want any cut edges left exposed, but instead, make a gluten “cloak” with a smooth surface.

Let the dough balls rest on the counter for a few minutes.

Using plenty of flour on the work surface and the rolling pin, roll out a dough ball to a 6-8 inch diameter. The dough should be around 1/8 of an inch thick. Roll out a second dough ball.

Bake

Carefully place the dough rounds onto your baking surface, making sure they’re not overlapping (this will sometimes hinder the formation of a steam pocket).

Note: If you have a larger ceramic tile, you can fit an extra dough round to bake three pitas at a time.

Bake for 2 minutes. At the end of 2 minutes, the pitas should be puffed up. Turn them over with a spatula or tongs, and bake for an additional 1 minute.

Use the baking time to roll out two more pitas.

When the two in the oven are done, remove to a baking tray and cover with a kitchen towel to keep them warm and soft.

Put the next two pitas on the baking stone. Repeat the rolling and baking process until all the pitas are baked.

Enjoy!

Fresh pitas are perfect for dipping in Greek classics such as tzatziki, hummus, or baba ganoush. Or my favorite – fill them with chicken or pork souvlaki and lettuce for the perfect hot Greek sandwich.