welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen if you were following along last
summer you might have seen me build a vertical charcoal rotisserie out of a
beer keg and I built that last year with an idea towards this summer as soon as
the snow cleared up and it got a little bit warmer to making shawarma and Alpesh
store and a whole bunch of different vertical rotisserie meats April 2020 not
sure if that's gonna happen in this summer I'm not afraid about getting the
ingredients I think the supply chains are great I will be able to find
everything that I need my problem really is around what do I do with 20 pounds of
shwarma my plan had been to invite family and friends over and to help eat
it after I'd shot the episode so I'm not sure if I'm gonna do it this summer or
not but just in case I need to learn how to make pita bread I've always just
bought pita bread at the grocery store but if I'm gonna be making shwarma from
scratch why not make pita bread from scratch as well so I thought I'd start
early figure out if I can do it where my shortfalls are so that I can get really
good by the time I shoot those videos so I've got a cup of water into this bowl
and I've put in traditional active dry yeast this time the last few recipes I
have used instant yeast but you know I'm running out so I'm gonna use what I have
and you could use either these you just sort of adjust the amounts and I'll put
the I'll put the differences down in the description box with the recipe now to
this I'm going to add half to 3/4 of a cup of flour and I just want to make a
sponge just until the yeast get going so I'm going to mix this together and then
I'm gonna put a cover on it and I'm gonna leave it for 15 to 20 minutes and
it should get frothy okay so we've got some bubbles in there and you can really
smell that yeast so now I'm going to put in the rest of the flour but I'm not
gonna put it all in I'm gonna put may be that much in I'm gonna leave a little
bit behind and I'm also going to put the salt in now and then just use a wooden
spoon to stir this into a ragged dough ball most of the recipes seem to do it
this way they hold back a little bit of the flour for the kneading process
I imagine that's because they don't want the dough to be too dry so even if you
are weighing this down to the gram you still need to play bread by ear
you still need to decide as you're making it if you need to add more flour
or not or more water depending on which way you've gone the difference is in the
flour the flour that I'm going to have here working within my kitchen is going
to be different than the flour you have working in your kitchen it's gonna be
made out of different wheats it's gonna be made out of different combination of
wheat it's going to be ground a little bit differently in some places they
grind it really fine and in other places it's ground a little bit more coarsely
and because of that even when you're weighing the flour we'll take different
amounts of water to get it hydrated to where you want to be so that's where
that argument of you have to weigh everything and it's a science kind of
goes out the window for me because the best breads that I've ever had are baked
by people who don't measure anything they just throw in the flour and they
add water until they get to the point that they want it to be and then it's
done so I'm gonna need this a little bit on the flour out on the board because it
definitely needs a little bit more flour then I put into the bowl and if I see
that it needs a little bit more because it's really sticking like that
just put a little more flour over and keep kneading it so I'm going to knead
this for two to three minutes so I don't think I'm gonna end up needing all of
the flour that I weighed out now I've never made this before and so what I do
when I'm looking for a recipe for the first time as I look at dozens of
different sources and books and websites and blogs and I see what other people
are doing and then I sort of distill that into a recipe that I think is going
to work and I give a shot for the first time like I'm doing today and there seem
to be a couple of different methods to making this and one method was what I
would consider the traditional bread baking method I would need this for 12
to 15 minutes by hand to build all of the gluten another way that seemed
pop up a lot was needed for two or three minutes put it in a bowl let it rest
then knead it for two or three more minutes and then put it in the bowl for
the rise so I think I'm gonna try that because I've never really done that
before so I've got a dough ball here that looks pretty good it's still tacky
which I understand is the way it's supposed to be so I'm gonna put that in
a bowl I'm gonna cover it and I'm gonna leave it for 15 minutes so one of the
perils of me doing these recipes on camera for the first time recipe that
I'm unfamiliar with while I'm operating the camera thinking about sound think
about lighting is that I often forget her an ingredient and this time I forgot
the oil I was supposed to put olive oil in when I was mixing this and I
contemplated going back and starting over but I thought no I'm just gonna
continue on I'm gonna pull this out for the second need and I'm just gonna
squirt in some olive oil and I'm gonna knead it in as I'm working I also
contemplated not putting it in at all and seeing what happened but I think I'm
gonna put it in it should be fine only called for a couple of tablespoons and
we'll just keep moving so it is a really loose dough it will take more flour at
this point definitely for sure so I am going to introduce a dough scraper and
take in some of the flour from last time that we didn't use and knead it in over
although this is a great feeling dough so the dough feels really good it's
really nice smooth elastic I think I've got it needed enough I gave it another
probably three minutes of kneading after I added the oil I did throw down a
little bit more flour because it was super sticky and now it's just a nice
smooth tacky dough which is great so it's gonna go for its first rise I'm
gonna put it into this bowl cover it over and leave it for 45 minutes to an
hour and a half that will depend on the temperature in your kitchen but you know
as everybody says doubled in bulk
okay we've definitely got a good rise on this definitely got a good rise so I
people get upset with me because I don't punch it down I really I get that that's
called punch down but by the time you scrape it out of the bowl onto the bench
you've punched it down pretty much you just want to deflate it do gas it a
little bit or completely depending on the recipe and often recipes don't say
whether you're supposed to do gas it completely or not so it's kind of up to
you I usually do gas completely by the time I get it out now I need to cut this
into eight equal or relatively equal pieces so I'm going to use a scale and
based on what I've got sitting here they need to be about 70 grams each so let's
see where we get 272 close enough now I'm gonna form these into balls and put
them on this tray and cover them over let them rest for 10 or 15 minutes and
what that does is allow the glutton to sort of rest and relax and it's going to
make shaping the pitas into flats so much easier and for this operation I
don't put any flour down on the bench you want the tension you want it to
stick to the bench a little bit so that you get a really good shape
okay so for this operation I think I'm going to need a little bit of flour on
my bench because I don't want it to stick I want to be able to turn it over
and and roll it out into a nice round so one piece of dough out and I think I'm
just gonna use my hand to smush it down first to start the round and don't be
afraid to pick it up and turn it over at least at this point I'm not that may
change as we carry on and now it's just roll it out and I think I need to get
out to six or eight inches is what I'm looking for or what most of the recipes
tell me to get to I think it's pretty good so I've got the oven preheated to
475 degrees Fahrenheit and I've got a pizza stone in the bottom that is super
hot at this point now if you don't have a pizza stone you could throw in I
believe a cast-iron frying pan put it in preheat it and then cook this on top of
the frying pan in the oven so I'm just going to pop this in and see what
happens
Oh Peter bread hey friends that super puffy is really puffy
now top tip don't put your hand on top and try to squish them down because the
steam inside is really hot yeah I burnt my hand so don't be an idiot like I was
don't try to push them down but you just really want to do you really want to
kind of poke it right you do it wasn't me anything though eventually they
deflate and you get a flat pita bread so how come what it makes it so that
there's a space in the middle for the big puffiness magic thanks deal is the
recipe any really any different thing no it is essentially just a regular bread
recipe salt flour water yeast the only thing that's that differs is the roll at
the end so it's don't like you do some fancy roll no all right all right that's
just too mysterious for me if someone has a really great explanation of how
and why this happens which I guess is a similar question please every one of
these we've got a pocket leave that that's a good-looking pocket I'm pretty
happy with I can stuff a lot of stuff in that pocket but it's as simple as any
other bread or so if you can make regular bread you can make a PITA it
really is where you're going with this definitely if you could if you've made
any other bread you could make this you really could i I do think that one of
the keys is having a screaming hot oven we've got the pizza stone don't have a
pizza stone just put in a frying pan mm-hmm and in sort of the the flour
tortilla vein you could cook it on a stovetop oh yeah you know the same sort
of I have to imagine that you know you'd get to the same place mm-hmm probably
much more common way to do it mhm there's on a flat surface yeah so I
think we're ready to go for shwarma um see if summer ever happened yes soon I'm
ready so I would say don't fear the Peter it's something that I've always
avoided cuz I thought it would be hard to get the puffiness got it on the first
try I may not do it next time but that's the way it goes with cooking so give it
a try don't be afraid stay safe stay healthy so you can soon
you