← Grain, flour and bread H45-06 · Module 6 of 7 · Pages: 18 · Worksheets: 5

Pita pastry and hand-stretched dough

Home-made dough for a Balkan pita from 500 g of flour: stretching it across the table, rolling sheets with a long pin, dried sheets for the store, fillings by weight and safe baking

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Pita pastry and hand-stretched dough

In short

  • Dough: 500 g flour, 310 g lukewarm water, 9 g salt, 15 g oil; knead 10–15 min until completely smooth.
  • Resting 30–60 min under oil is the secret: rested dough stretches, unrested dough tears.
  • For stretching you need stronger white flour with plenty of gluten (strong white bread flour, Balkan T-550 or T-500); plain flour (T-400) is soft. Wholemeal won't stretch thin.
  • 500 g of flour makes dough for one ∅ 40 cm tin (16 in) of rolled pita, 8–10 portions.
  • A meat pita must be baked through, 72 °C (162 °F) in the filling (74 °C / 165 °F with chicken). A baked pita stands at room temperature for 2 hours at most.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. Sheets, jufka and pita
  2. Flour for the dough
  3. Dough for stretching
  4. Stretching on the table
  5. Rolled pita
  6. Sheets with a rolling pin
  7. Dried sheets for the store
  8. Fillings and amounts
  9. Baking and serving
  10. Hygiene and keeping a pita
  11. When the dough tears
  12. Common mistakes
  13. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Dough calculator
  • Shopping for pitas
  • Pita calendar
  • Dough log
  • Pitas for guests

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

This guide in other languages:

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