Recipe for Sourdough Pitas
Make these simple sourdough pitas for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. This is an everyday recipe to practice using your sourdough starter on a weekly basis.
Ingredients
- 1 cup Sourdough starter - doubled in size with lots of bubbles*
- 2 cups Water
- 2 tsp. Sea Salt
- 1/3 cup Olive or Avocado Oil
- 5-6 cups Organic White Flour
Instructions
- At least six hours before baking, combine 1 cup of starter, 2 cups of water, 2 tsp. sea salt, 1/3 cup of oil, 5-6 cups of flour. Add the flour slowly, a few cups at a time. Watch for the dough to stiffen and to stop leaving a sticky dough-trail on the bowl. Be really careful not to add too much flour or your pitas will crack when baked. Be patient and watch the flour absorb the liquids until it firms up and clears the sides of the bowl.
- Knead the dough for 8 minutes in a stand mixer or 12 minutes by hand.
- Form a smooth, uniform ball of dough and place in pre-greased container. Make sure your bowl is big enough for the dough to double in size. Cover and let sit for at least six hours. If you don't have time to bake that day, put the dough in a covered container and place it in the fridge overnight. Remove and return to room temperature before baking.
- Divide the dough into 15-20 pieces and form them into smooth balls.
- Preheat your oven WITH THE PAN inside to 500F/260c.
- Begin rolling out each small ball as you might a pizza dough. Keep the width uniform to prevent burning in overly thin areas. Don't overwork the dough to ensure the best success with poofy pitas.
- Once the oven and pan are preheated, quickly place the pitas on the pan spaced a few inches apart. Keep your pan in the middle of your oven to prevent burning yourself as you reach in and out. I use the longest, sturdiest spatula I have to place and remove pitas. Move quickly and keep the oven open only as long as necessary to prevent dropping the temperature too much.
- Bake for about five minutes but use your oven light to watch the pitas so they don't turn too brown on top or they'll break. Each oven is different so adjust your bake time accordingly. After a few minutes, you should see the pitas poof.
Notes
*If you want your pitas to poof within 4-6 hours, be sure your sourdough starter is full of bubbles and doubled in size. You may also use sourdough discard, but you will need to give the dough longer to ferment, 6-8 hours or longer depending on your ambient temperature and how hungry your starter was.
Using discard in a recipe is like giving the starter a big meal but it will take a little longer for the discard to digest what an active starter has already processed through.
You may substitute out 2 or more cups of whole wheat flour for the white flour.
You can mix this recipe with a stand mixer as long as your motor is strong enough to handle that much flour. I usually mix with a wooden spoon and then finish with my hands so that I can feel the texture of the dough change as the water is absorbed. It's easier for me to discern if I need more or less flour by touch, rather than by sight.
Sometimes your pitas don't poof but they taste delicious anyway. Just keep experimenting with the recipe until you get the hang of it.
If I want these pitas for breakfast, I mix them up the night before and let them ferment overnight on my counter.
If your house is cold, place the culturing dough in a warm place like by the woodstove or on top of the fridge.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!