See all Posts
When it comes to properly baking pita that puffs, it pays to weigh your ingredients.
Date
February 16, 2024
On Milk Street Radio, Ed Sabbagh, of Beverly, Massachusetts, reached out with an unusual dilemma—his flatbreads are too flat! When baking pita bread, he has struggled to get them to puff, and wondered what was going wrong.
A host of factors can make perfectly puffed pitas difficult to pull off. If the round of dough is too thick, the dough is too dry or the oven temperature is too low, pita breads will struggle to puff. That’s because the puff is steam-powered. For it to work, the dough must be neither too thick nor too thin, and be sufficiently hydrated so that the blast of heat from the oven quickly turns the moisture to steam that inflates the bread. One of the best ways to get this right is a kitchen scale.
Measuring by volume can create problems with almost any baked good, but breads such as pita can be particularly susceptible to this inexact approach, as too much or too little flour easily throws off hydration levels. In our testing, measuring flour by volume created enough variance that we often produced dough that was too dry to properly puff. The dry dough also was harder to roll, yielding thicker rounds. The result was pitas that were prone to splitting when (and if) they puffed. So particularly when baking pita, it pays to weigh your ingredients.
Our Pita Bread recipe is a little unusual. We make ours with whole-wheat flour and whole-milk yogurt for full flavor and a pleasant chew. Yogurt is common in some flatbreads but is generally not used in pita. We, however, found it helped produce a soft, elastic dough and a tender, but slightly chewy baked bread. If you’ve never made pita before, it’s an excellent place to start
But pita isn’t the only flatbread. Once you’ve mastered pita—or even if you haven’t—check out some of our other favorite flatbreads recipes, all of which our inspired by our travels:
Pita, Chickpea and Herb Salad with Tahini Yogurt
Fatteh turns stale pita bread into a satisfying toasty salad, topped with warmed chickpeas and garlic-spiked yogurt.
Piadina
We resisted using lard at first, since so few have it on hand—yet Chris Kimball writes that the ingredient made for such an improvement that it’s worth urging readers to seek it out. It “made the piadine tender, with just the right chew and a rich background flavor,” he writes. “What a difference.”
Roman Cloud Bread with Mixed Greens and Fennel Salad
This is Roman Cloud Bread, crunchy, hollow poofs created by baker Angelo Arrigoni. In a happy accident, Arrigoni—owner of a century-old bakery near the Vatican—discovered that slightly overhydrated pizza dough cooked up into balloon-like creations, now served stuffed with salad. They make a surprisingly tasty light lunch. In fact, they disappeared from the office freebies table almost as soon as they arrived.
Spinach and Feta Flatbreads
Spinach and feta—the incredibly satisfying combination of spanakopita pastry pockets—make for an easy, savory and creamy flatbread topping. Greek yogurt gives the dough a a chewy-soft crumb, subtle richness, and deep flavor. Throw it together in the food processor a day ahead, and tomorrow night’s work is practically done.
Flatbreads Filled with Pork, Green Olives and Feta
These pork-stuffed buttery flatbreads contain so many surprising flavor pops, despite being such a simple meal. A creation of chef Ana Sortun, the bread absorbs incredible richness from a smear of butter-feta blend, while the ground pork filling—inspired by Greek loukanika—gets multi-layered flavor from an abundance of spices, garlic, zest, and savory olives.
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.
And if you're looking for more Milk Street, check out our livestream cooking classes with our favorite chefs, home cooks and friends for global recipes, cooking methods and more.
Shop the Milk Street Store
