Can Homemade Pitas Be Far Behind?

Julie sent me a link to the Minimalist showing how to make flatbread.

Unleavened, for Passover, in theory though I gather there are differences of opinion about whether olive oil is appropriate. I guess there are some Jews who insist it can only be flour and water, which doesn't sound very appetizing to me. But then, even if I was born Jewish, I couldn't keep kosher: no bacon or shrimp? I couldn't do it, and besides, I'm a lobster myself, so what would be the point of keeping kosher except to avoid cannibalism?



I used equal parts olive oil and water, a half cup of each, whisked into an emulsion and blended with two cups bread flour. Next challenge, how to roll it out super thin?



I don't own a rolling pin. It's not that it would be such an extravagance, but my old one was so old and nasty (cracked, and prone to shed black stuff out of the bearings) I chucked it. I hand-stretch my pizza doughs, so who needs a pin?

This isn't a recipe with well developed gluten to allow for hand stretching and tossing, so I had to figure something out. Jill Santopietro relayed that Mark Iacono of Luconi's used a wine bottle as a rolling pin. I don't drink much wine, so I used a pint sleeve to roll this stuff out.




How thin do you roll it out? Thin. See-through.

You want it super thin. The Minimalist set his oven at 500ºF and used pans, I cooked mine directly on the stone, but his times, two minutes on side one and a minute after the flip didn't yield very crisp results in my oven. I cranked it up to 550ºF and we were there.




By the way, flipping the flatbread with your bare hands after two minutes is a mistake. I scooped it up on the peel and learned that the knife sitting on the counter was a pain-free flipper.

I did also shred some Gruyere on a couple of them, which is divine.



I'm going to have to dig around and find out what the tricks are to pita bread. I've done Naan, and of course the obvious white bread, baguettes, Irish soda bread, etc. But the way pitas separate, it seems like it would require witchcraft.