Pita Breads

Since we’ve been working on the great hummus experiment recently, I’ve been wanting to come up with a good, easy pita recipe (because $2 for 5 pita, while not a terrible price, gets old). Yesterday I did a side by side of two different recipes I found online. The first recipe, a Greek pita recipe, was ok. I used this recipe to make pita chips today, and they turned out quite well. The recipe is repeated here for modification:

1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 tablespoon of sugar
1/2 cup of warm water
4 cups of bread flour
2 teaspoons of salt
1 cup of warm water
1 tablespoon of olive oil

Proof yeast in 1/2 cup of water, with sugar. Mix dry ingredients, then add the liquid and bring together to form a smooth dough. Let rise until doubled, then knead briefly. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Portion dough out into small amounts-I was able to make about 12, although you could probably get 16 pita easily as well. Roll out to about 1/8″ thick, and place on a greased sheet pan. In the future, I won’t dock the bread, as I’ll be using this for chips, and in that case, pocket pita does work better. Bake for about 3 minutes on the lowest rack of the oven, then flip pita and bake for another 3-4 minutes.

To make chips, cut pita into 8 wedges and brush with oil and lay out single file on a sheet pan. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sprinkle pita with salt and pepper, and any other herbs or flavorings you care for-in the restaurants around here, zatar seasoning is popular, but it’s up to you. Bake for 6-7 minutes, then flip chips over and bake for another 5-6 minutes, or until golden brown and crispy. These go great with hummus, the cannellini bean dip, or a baba ghanoush.

The second recipe was found here. We both preferred this second recipe as soft pita for simply eating or dipping. Now, neither of us are too keen on the typical pocket pita (aside from the aforementioned chip application), as they tend to be dry and rather styrofoam-like.

Ingredients:
1-1/4 cups milk, warmed
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups bread flour.
1-1/2 teaspoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon yeast

Proof yeast in milk with sugar. Mix the remainder of the dry ingredients together, then add the liquid and oil. Bring together, kneading as necessary to form a smooth dough. Let rise until doubled. Knead dough, and divide into 10-12 small balls. Roll out to 1/4″-1/8″ thick, and let rise for another 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place on a greased sheet pan, and punch down slightly with the knuckles before baking for 4-5 minutes on the bottom rack of the oven.

For the next round of pita I make, I’m going to get some whole wheat flour and substitute about 1/4 to 1/2 a cup of the bread flour for it. Hopefully that will give it some extra bite and and good grain undertone.

EDIT: We finally made these again, and used a ratio of 2 cups of bread flour to 1 cup of whole wheat flour. These were awesome. A deeper wheat flavor, and they retained more moisture too. Definitely an adjustment we’ll be keeping.

Moussaka Note

Yesterday we decided to spend the afternoon cooking as well, so we made moussaka. We planted an eggplant plant back at the start of the growing season, and had four smallish eggplants we needed to do something with. Now, we both love this moussaka recipe, but the frying of the eggplant is a big smelly, smokey pain, so we decide to fire up the grill and get the cast iron skillet out and fry on the grill. This is definitely the way to go for this. The house stayed stink and smoke free, while the eggplant cooked. In the future, we’ll probably just grill the eggplant and skip the frying entirely.

Old Post 8: Eggplant Moussaka and Greek style green beans.

Moussaka is a dish consisting of lightly browned eggplant, a tomato-meat sauce, and a white sauce (essentially bechamel), layered like lasagna, and baked.

For the eggplant:
3 Medium eggplants, peel, slice 1/2 in. thick, salt and let drain for 1/2 hour while you make the sauces. When you slice the eggplant, go the long way, not rounds, it’ll work better. Then dry eggplant and shake in a bag with flour and a good grind of black pepper. Brown in a bit of hot olive oil. Be careful with the amount of oil, and use only enough to brown a few slices at a time. Make sure to keep the heat up, and steady, unless you want oil sponges rather than eggplant. Drain the eggplant and reserve. (You may wish to unhook your smoke detector and pop the windows open – this tends to give off a lot of smoke and smell – if you can do this outside on the grill in a cast iron pan, you’ll be much happier)

Bechamel Sauce:
In a saucepan over medium heat mix together:
6 Tbsp Butter
6 Tbsp flour

Whisk for a couple minutes and add:
3 cups milk

*Gently* bring to a boil, stirring, and simmer couple minutes. Whisk a cup or so of this mixture into:
3 eggs, well beaten

Whisk the egg mixture back into the white sauce and bring up to a gentle simmer, whisking until thick. Do not boil, or sauce will scramble. Add:
Pinch of nutmeg
Dash Tabasco Sauce

Let White Sauce cool. It should be quite thick. Sauce can be prepped in advance and refrigerated.
Note: I would make a bit more than this amount next time I do this recipe – most of the places I’ve had moussaka in have close to half an inch of the white sauce standing on top of the moussaka, plus some between the layers.

Meat sauce:
Brown in heavy frying pan:
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 lb ground lamb or beef. (Lamb is tastier, harder to find, and leaner, thus the oil. If you use ground beef, omit the oil).

Drain grease. Add:

large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped

Saute around until onion limp. Add:

8 oz. can tomato sauce
1/2 tsp cinnamon
tsp dried leaf oregano
Tbsp chpped parsley
Tbsp chopped mint
a bit of salt and pepper
(I cheated here, and substituted Cavendar’s to taste (it was handy, and it was winter when I first made this, making fresh herbs more difficult to find here – additionally I abhor mint – so it’s ALWAYS optional)

Simmer gently until quite thick. The red sauce can be prepared well ahead of time, and keeps well refrigerated.

Assembly:
The parts of the Moussaka are:

Eggplant
White Sauce
Red Sauce
1 cup coarse dry bread crumbs
2 cups Mozzarella or other white cooking cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, optional

Use a good sized lasagna tray with a cover. Put about 1/3 of the eggplant on the bottom in a solid layer. Trim eggplant to fit. Spread 1/2 of the meat mixture on top. Spread 1/3 of white sauce over meat. Sprinkle with 1 cup cheese, 1/3 cup of crumbs. Repeat this set of layers. Then put in a layer of the rest of the eggplant, the rest of the white sauce and cover with the rest of the crumbs. Garnish top with a sprinkle of red chile or paprika and an small handful of chopped parsley. Cover, and bake at 350 degrees for an hour, uncover and bake until browned on top and bubbly.

N.B. First things first, figure out how much eggplant you have, for how many layers.. if you’ve got two layers of eggplant, you need three layers of filling, and so on… so divide the fillings up accordingly.. it doesn’t have to be precise – just make sure you’ve got 1/2 inch or so of white sauce on top, when its all assembled.

Serve with the following Greek style green beans, which are very similar to what we get at the Mad Greek in Lawrence, KS:

Ingredients:
1 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 (28 ounce) can diced tomato
1 teaspoon dried oregano (or Greek seasoning, such as cavendars, to taste, I used about 1tbsp probably)
2 (9 ounce) bags frozen French cut green beans, thawed and drained

Method:
Add olive oil to a large nonstick skillet and heat over medium heat until hot. Add onion and garlic and saute until tender, about 5 minutes. Add undrained tomatoes, olives and herb/spices. Simmer uncovered, for 10 minutes. Add beans and simmer uncovered until most of the liquid is absorbed.