This bread is so easy to make. I made it in no time, it took me no more than 15 minutes to combine all of the ingredients and put them into the hot oven. Even if you’re tired in the evening after work, you can easily prepare it and have fresh, sweet bread for breakfast. It actually is a perfect breakfast bread. Goes great with morning coffee and can be eaten alone or with tasty marmalade. It does not need yeast to rise, the leavening ingredients used are baking powder and soda, that’s why it’s so quick. Yeast breads, like my zucchini bread, require at least 2 hours before they can be baked. Banana bread is kind of a muffin like bread. The ingredients could be easily used in the muffin recipe and although I haven’t tried, you can pour the batter into muffin tin instead of a loaf tin. Just remember that it will bake faster (about 20-25 min) in the muffin tin.
Pita bread is usually the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Middle Eastern food. It is always served with shish kabob, shawarma and is inseparable companion of hummus. Today pita actually has many more uses, you can roll it into wrap or stuff it with whatever you want. I like to stuff mine with mixed lettuces, tomatoes, cucumber and feta for a delicious, healthy lunch. It so widely available in any supermarket that no one even thinks about making it at home but trust me it tastes so much better than the generic type that occupies store shelves. I’m sure you easily notice the difference in taste between store brand pita and restaurant quality pita. Homemade pita bread is as good as any pita you can find in an Middle Eastern food spot.
Ingredients (8 pita breads):
2 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup warm water
1/4 oz dry active yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/2 Tbsp salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
In a glass combine 1 packet active dry yeast with 1 tsp sugar and 1/3 cup warm water. Mix and leave for 15 min for the yeast to start working.
In a bowl mix together 2 1/2 cup all purpose flour with 1/2 Tbsp salt. Make a well in the middle and add yeast mixture. Start drawing flour into the yeast. Very slowly add the rest of the warm water and incorporate with the flour.
When quite uniform transfer to a floured board and start kneading for 10 minutes until it’s elastic, smooth and not sticky anymore. You might have to keep adding a bit more flour on a board while kneading.
Form a ball with your dough, pour some olive oil on your hands and coat the dough. Place the dough in a bowl, cover and leave for 1.5 to 2 hours to rise.
After that time take out the dough and divide into 8 equal parts. Form balls and put on a floured board , cover with towel and leave for another 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 500°F. The oven has to be very very hot before you can bake pita breads. Arrange 2 or 3 on a cookie sheet and bake 6 minutes on a bottom rack. Do not be tempted to open the oven before that time or pita breads might not get puffy.
Note: In the beginning my pita breads weren’t coming out very puffy but I’ve noticed that when I sprayed the walls of the oven with water right before putting breads inside, they we coming out puffier. Also oven should be really hot so preheat it a while before baking pitas, not just right before.
Ever since I remember I’ve been always wanting to bake my own bread. My first trial, when I was a teenage girl, ended up with a big disaster and even bigger frustration. I had few more trials later on in my life but none of them ended successfully, until yesterday. I told myself that that’s it, now I have my cooking blog and I have to finally learn how to bake bread. It can’t be that hard and like most of the things it just needs some practice. Oh, how anxious I was when the bread was in the oven. It smelled amazing but my experience told me that it doesn’t mean anything, just because it smells nice doesn’t mean that it will taste well and have a proper texture. My last bread also smelled nice but came out hard as a stone, completely inedible. But now I finally know why. The thing is that certain breads like rye bread for example (which was the one that came out hard as a stone) doesn’t grow well with yeast, it needs addition of fermented sour while other breads like simple wheat bread grows fine with yeast. I don’t feel confident enough yet to start making sourdough breads but after making my zucchini bread I feel pretty confident about yeast breads. This one was my first but expect to see more. I’m planning to be baking way way more breads.
This bread is so easy to make. I made it in no time, it took me no more than 15 minutes to combine all of the ingredients and put them into the hot oven. Even if you’re tired in the evening after work, you can easily prepare it and have fresh, sweet bread for breakfast. It actually is a perfect breakfast bread. Goes great with morning coffee and can be eaten alone or with tasty marmalade. It does not need yeast to rise, the leavening ingredients used are baking powder and soda, that’s why it’s so quick. Yeast breads, like my zucchini bread, require at least 2 hours before they can be baked. Banana bread is kind of a muffin like bread. The ingredients could be easily used in the muffin recipe and although I haven’t tried, you can pour the batter into muffin tin instead of a loaf tin. Just remember that it will bake faster (about 20-25 min) in the muffin tin.
