Pitas are my new favorite bread!

So this post is a few days late... but things have been a little busy outside of class! (I'll update on that later.)

Class was a little crazy too! By 10am, we were down to 2 people in my group (including me!) and we actually made all of these breads:

Ciabatta

Challah

Pita

Baguette

Sesame Crackers

Out of all these awesome and delicious and different breads, I've gotta say my new favorite is pita, if only because it is the coolest ever thing to watch bake! I tried to find a good video online to share with you all, but it's so much neater in person, you should just make some at home! :) All you need is a pizza stone and a peel to move the hot bread around. (If you can't bake it at home, then I guess a you tube video will do!)

So we did a repeat of ciabatta, challah and baguette... we got some extra practice on ciabatta and baguette, since those two breads will be on our final practical (this Sunday!). The challah my group tried again, since we didn't get it right the first time... and again... we missed a very small thing, but it turned out to be a big problem later! We used regular instant yeast, instead of osmotolerant yeast. Osmotolerant yeast reacts differently with the sugars in the dough, and because we didn't use it, we had to proof our dough for nearly 4 hours!! (Instead of 2!!) It looked fine, and tastes delicious... definitely different than before!

We also made some sesame crackers, with sesame and wasabi sesame crackers. They had a little bit of milk in them, and butter, but I tried them anyway. I really don't like not knowing if something that I've made is good or not! Getting the crispy cracker consistency is harder than I realized! But they were tasty little crackers (especially with the little kick of wasabi!)

Now for the most exciting part of the day... the pitas!!!!

I don't know about you, but I've wondered since I ate my first pita sandwich how they heck they get that pocket in the middle. So I was so excited to finally find out how pitas are made. The dough itself is quite simple, and the shaping isn't too difficult either. You take a chunk of the dough, and roll it around in your hand on the workbench, but not like a snowball. You keep the same surface touching the palm of your hand, so that the little ball of dough gets a "belly button".

Now, once the little dough balls have their belly buttons, they need to rest for a little bit, and then you roll them out into flat disks, 1/8th inch thick.... no thinner, no thicker!

From here, its off to the oven, where the magic happens! The flat disks are loaded into the hot, hot oven (500 degrees), so they're not touching each other, and after just a couple of minutes, you start to see the yeast bubbles pop up on the surface of each pita. The dough starts to look like its alive as all the bubbles join together, and when they all join together, the pita puffs up like a whoopie cushion. When most of the pitas are whoopie cushions, you take the peel and scoop under all the pitas, which kind of act like balloons! While they're still on the peel, you very carefully and quickly flip over each pita, and put them back in the oven. The puffing up process is even faster the second time, about 10 seconds, and then all the pitas come out of the oven.

(Here's a peek at the pitas puffing up in the oven)

I had to check one of our pitas, just to make sure it really did have a pocket... and sure enough, it did!! Here's the pocket (which you can fill with lots of yummy delicious things!)

This next class will be my last breads class... there's so much more I'd love to learn about breads! Its fascinating to learn how breads bake!