Pita Recipe

Pita is the great magic trick of bread baking: a plain four-ingredient dough that, given enough heat, balloons up in under a minute and collapses on cooling into a flatbread with a hollow pocket running through the middle. Split it and you have a pouch for falafel or shawarma; leave it whole and warm and it tears into pieces for dipping. Few breads give this much payoff for this little effort.

The dough itself is lean and unfussy — flour, water at 62%, 2% salt, 1% yeast, and a small 5% oil for a little suppleness and shelf life. There is no enrichment to fuss over and no long schedule; the entire character of pita comes not from the ratio but from how it is baked. The medium hydration matters: too dry and the pita will not puff, too wet and it spreads and tears instead of inflating.

The pocket is pure physics. A thin round of dough goes onto a surface preheated as hot as your oven will run — ideally a baking stone or steel at 500°F or above. The intense bottom heat flashes the surface moisture to steam faster than it can escape, the steam inflates the round like a balloon, and the two skins set apart from each other. When it cools and deflates, that gap is your pocket. The keys are a genuinely hot stone, an even thickness when you roll (thin spots tear and vent the steam), and a short, fierce bake — two to four minutes, no more.

If a round refuses to puff it is almost always too cool a stone or an uneven roll, not the dough. Even a flat pita tastes good; a puffed one just feels like you got away with something.