Lily Learns Spanish Through Food: Pitas

Awhile back I got a bunch of cookbooks in Spanish, partially for ideas and partially to help me learn the language. My favorite of them has been a bread cookbook, I promptly ran myself out of yeast testing things out. Well I've got more yeast and now a new recipe to share with you all. I've actually been making pitas for years, but this was a fun challenge to see the difference in technique this one offers.

I took these photos of the pages in the cookbook about this recipe for anyone interested in seeing the spanish text themselves. This book is called Pan Casero.

I get a pound of yeast for 42 pesos, or about 2-3 dollars. It lasts me a few months depending on usage.

Start by making a slurry of a little warm water and yeast. The recipe actually calls for fresh yeast but I couldn't get ahold of any.

Then to combine all the other ingredients into a bowl.

375 g all purpose flour

25 g whole wheat flour

20 g sugar

5 g salt

yeast slurry

250g water

The yeast is ready when it's foamy.

Combine everything until it makes a loose dough, then turn out onto a floured surface.

Knead for 5-7 minutes until it looks like this. Section into 80 gram balls.

Cover and allow to rise until doubled in size. This is where our methods differed. I used to just let it rise as one mass, which took longer and just all around seems to be inferior. The guy that wrote this book is smart, I've found.

Roll them all out on parchment paper like shown, allow them to rise for 15-20 minutes as the oven heats up to 260 degrees fahrenheit. I put my cast iron griddle in there as a baking stone surface and it works really well for that.

The trick to the pita pocket is the thinness, the extra rise and a flip halfway through cooking. If done well, the air bubbles forming in the pita will expand and it'll puff open. It's a lot easier said than done.