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Pita recipe here , error on page?

Sparkie's picture
Sparkie

Pita recipe here , error on page?

Hi,

 

I made the pitas liston the right side of the page from this site. I think the water is too much . I made them as instructed and it unusable, then I looked at the recipe, 2.5 (or 2.25) water to a pound of flour , I added more flour salt, they came out ok, I guess. I play in the kitchen so, I sued soem speldt, in place of wheat flour. I took hald and made pita (some had pockets, some did not), the other half I simply rose forst coating it with seseme seeds then slitting it , allowing a good rise. Every one loved the bread, didn't like the pita.  I really was trying for the pocket, and some worked others did not work.

 

One day I will do the lentil bean roti trick I watched the women do at a restaurant I did electrical work for.

 

They took a lump of dough say 3-4 ounces, poked a hole in it, then filled it with about a tblspn ground cooekd lentils, sealed it, then rolled it to a disc, real big like 14-16 inches then panfried 'em. , not too dry, very flexable. When you order a Roti (say curried chix, they take this put a nice schmear of spudes a ladle of chix  filling then pull up the sides, and it looks like a huge round knish or burger. to eat you open it tear off bread and scoop up the stew, no forks, well I used fork. I tried to tell the owner, for people in USA who work in office , debone everything, cook the bones in the stock, but remove them. People will pick them up and bit it like a burger. He went out of biz. sadly. His carribean food was great.

 

chris

Floydm's picture
Floydm

This pita recipe?. 3 cups flour to 1 cup of water is only something like 55 or 60% hydration. That isn't too wet.

qahtan's picture
qahtan

 I make pita pockets with my usual white bread dough, in fact we had pita's last night, filled with cold roast beef, watercress and horseradish cream. they puffed well.

 

             qahtan

Sparkie's picture
Sparkie

Hi Qahtan,

 

I will need to go see if I kep a cpy of the recipe. I must have misread it, I thought it asked for 2.5 cups water, YIKES

 

1 cup water for 3 cups flour is a very coft dough, but not what I made , jeepers. I will see if I saved eithe the digital copy or the printed copy. Using Speldt will screw up a basic recipe if one is not careful, but everyone loved the loaves AND the pita's. The ones that ballooned were fabulous. I think next time I will undercook them a tad.

 

I will repost when (if) I find my copy to see what I did wrong.

 

thanks for writng back

sparkie

Sparkie's picture
Sparkie

 Hi, below is what I followed I went to that site I thought it was connectyed to what i saw here. It is 4.5 cups flour to 2.5 cups water, I used some speldt, and that may have been the kicker that killed the dog. But I added more white flour and  they were fine, as i stated I took half and made a loaf bread and it was great, so no harm no foul.

 

I do not truely understand the hydration stuff, I thought (here I can be wrong) hydration is the ratio of flour to water   (by weight of each) so 16 ounce of weighed water and weighed flour is 100 % hydration, but 8 ounces by weight of water to 16 ounce weight of flour is 50% hydration.

 But I am not sure. I just know that for 4-5 cups of flour 1.5 cups liquid is a VERY soft dough.

 

 

I post this recipe before for JMonkey, you can see it here [1]. She does it right on the grills, no pans no stones plus other cool food recipes see:http://arabicbites.blogspot.com/2007/09/naan-bread.html 1 Tablespoon yeast.
1 Tablespoon honey or sugar .
2 1\2 cup warm water.
3 cups white flour.
1 1\2 cups whole wheat flour.
2 teaspoon salt.
2 Tablespoons olive oil. 1)Preheat the oven to 550 degrees.2)Combine yeast,honey and 1\2 cup water in bowl,cover,stand in warm place about 10 minutes or until mixture is frothy.3)place all ingredients + yeast mixture in the bowl of mixer ,beat 10 minutes to make a soft dough.
ejm's picture
ejm

The recipe I use for pita is 1 c water (250gm) for 1 c wholewheat (about 125gm) and 1½ c  (about 200gm) allpurpose flour, working out to about 77% hydration (I think). We've made pita on a bread stone, on the stove-top and directly on the grill in the barbecue. The dough is not particularly slack (but then I don't really know what slack means any more because I've made so much really slack dough bread).

our pita recipe: http://etherwork.net//recipes/flatbread.html#pita

-Elizabeth 

Sparkie's picture
Sparkie

Hi Elizabeth,

 

Today mayhaps I make a batch by that recipe and see if it was the flour or the baker! I will use no whole grain flour, just white.

 I have a feeling the speldt was part of the problem, but regardless it is a very damp dough indeed.

To me, from reading , slack is when dough has over risen and then rises little, not enough.  But being so very moist perhaps this applies here as well.

 this url did not work got a 404 message

 http://etherwork.net//recipes/flatbread.html#pita 

this one did work, is this your recipe?

http://etherwork.net/ejmtph/recipes/flatbread.html#roti#roti

 

thanks so very much for your reply

sparkie

ejm's picture
ejm

Yes, that is my recipe. This URL for the pita recipe
http://etherwork.net/recipes/flatbread.html#pita

should automatically forward to
http://etherwork.net/ejmtph/recipes/flatbread.html#pita

(I see that I inadvertently put in an extra slash on the shortened URL on the other post; I'll fix it...) 

 On November 13, 2008 - 8:39am, Sparkie wrote:

I will use no whole grain flour, just white.

Note that I ALWAYS use whole wheat flour and unbleached allpurpose flour when making pita. I think all white flour pita might be a little dull tasting (but maybe that's just me).

I've never worked with Spelt flour before but, apparently some people with allergies to wheat can eat spelt. (Which doesn't make sense to me because I gather spelt is in the same family as wheat...)

Is it possible that spelt has lower gluten content and that's why you ended up with such liquid dough?

-Elizabeth 

 

 

Sparkie's picture
Sparkie

I just did th ehydration ratio thing ( think I did it right), using elizabeths weights for flour water, you get 86.21 % hydration, a tad much perhaps.

 these doughs deep fast fried would make a nice zeppoli dust with powder sugar to finish them, (if in new england first slther with melted butter, then choice of regular powder sugar, or cinnamin sugar).

 

mmmm

 sparkie

ejm's picture
ejm

Maybe it's a mistake in my weight calculations. I confess that I haven't made pita using our scale. (We only recently got the scale.)

Ingredients for 8 pitas
  • ¼ c lukewarm water
  • 1 tsp active dry yeast
  • ½ Tbsp olive oil
  • ½ Tbsp honey
  • ¾ c room-temperature water
  • 1 c whole wheat flour (strong)
  • 1½ c unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp salt
http://etherwork.net/recipes/flatbread.html#pita

Please not that our cup measure holds 250ml

-Elizabeth

edit: according to GourmetSleuth

unbleached all-purpose: 250 ml = 132.5 grams ; 375 ml = 198.75 grams

wholewheat: 250 ml = 127.5 grams

Sparkie's picture
Sparkie

Hi,

The speldt is a wheat precusor (as we know it), and gletin problem people canneigh eat it. BUT it has a lot less gluten, os some sensative people can not eat it, really laargic people will reac tbadly.

BUT it has a lot less, and it makes a wetter more limp dough. I think the recipe on line was just a typo, I think it should have been 1.5 cups (aout 375 ml). I am in USA and we use english sytem for somethings and metric when it suits us. We had a billion dollar sattelite crash because of that sillyness.

 Anbd the natural consistency of speldt made it worse, I will sally forth another day though.

I just did the onion roll recipe again (doubled)and added a small amount of speldt and added more sugar, but the biggie was 1/4 tspn diastatic malt and freeze dried buttermilk powder. I let have a very long rise and so it did not rise as much later. Some I made into rolls the other half I made into a large braided loaf.  I am still playing with oven temps, I am down to 400 if two pans, the bread came out like pretzles. And it took a dark burn like a pretzle, If I hit t with eggs white and salt and tossed it back in, you would think it was a pretzle loaf.

 

enjoy

 

sparkie