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This started out as a pita recipe, but somewhere in there my old friend the muffin tin insisted on being included, so I ended up with something less pocket-like but still very good.
To backtrack a little — when I first read a pita recipe a few years ago, I was surprised to learn I didn’t have to start by forming two layers of dough and joining them together. Each pita comes from a single circle of dough. The dough itself forms the layers by puffing up as it bakes and then collapsing back into a disc.
Before our current Bread Month rolled around, I hadn’t baked pita for years, but I was inspired by Kim, another editor, who passed along the Wimbush Family recipe for it. After studying this and other pita recipes, I could see the ratio (thank you, Richard Ruhlman) was one part water to three parts flour, plus an optional teaspoon of fat for every cup of flour, a little salt, and of course enough yeast to make the whole thing rise.
I came up with a simple pita recipe for bread machine and toaster oven. Baking it in a muffin tin resulted in thicker, less puffy bread — but it’s still great for mini sandwiches or just a side dish at dinner.
- ⅓ cup water
- 1 teaspoon shortening, optional
- 1 cup flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon rapid-rise yeast
- Put the ingredients, in the order listed, into the bread machine and set on dough cycle.
- When the dough is done, divide into six equal pieces and roll out — briefly — into circles a quarter inch thick.
- Grease a six-cup muffin tin and put one piece in each cup.
- Bake at 450 for about seven minutes — these won’t brown much on top, but you’ll see them puff up as they’re near ready.
- (Full disclosure: I listed the shortening as optional because I just plain forgot to put it in — the bread turned out fine, and its fat-free state gives you all the more reason to put plenty of butter on it.)
