Pitta

A Savoury-dish recipe, by Gina Lioti.

2 people (4 pittas)

8-10 mins prep

10 mins cooking

“Pitta breads are a type of flatbread used in Greek cuisine, usually to wrap gyros or souvlaki and their accompaniments, but also to dip into tzatziki, melitzanosalata, tirokafteri and/or others.”

Gina Lioti

Here’s why you’re going to love this

I don’t think I have ever had handmade pittas while I lived in Greece; the ones you get at gyros shops are pretty decent, especially when they are served warm. But as with everything else, you can’t compare them to the handmade ones.

This is the best recipe for easy and tasty pittas. Prepared in only a few minutes and fried in a few more, with only 5 ingredients in total, they are so much better than anything you have ever tasted in a gyros shop. You can even have them instead of bread, to dip in soups. But of course they are best served with souvlaki or gyros, tzatziki (or any other dip) and a simple tomato and cucumber salad.

Ingredients

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Instructions

Mix the flour, salt, cayenne pepper and yoghurt in a deep plate for a few minutes, until a soft dough forms. If needed, add some extra flour, until the dough does not stick to your fingers.
With your hands, separate the dough in two even pieces and then each of those into two more, until they are four, as even as possible. This is optional, but you can sprinkle the balls with a little cayenne pepper.
At this point, I knead them into small balls and leave them aside for a few minutes, until everything else that I'm cooking in parallel is prepared. If you don't need to do this, skip to the next step.
Put a small pan on your hob on the highest setting.
Take one of the balls and place it in the middle of a dinner plate. Using your fingers press it gently outwards until it spreads, trying to keep it as even as possible. The diameter should be around 12-16 cm and the pitta should be flat and even.
Put a small sliver of butter on your hot pan for only a few seconds, until it melts. Add your pitta and allow it to cook for a couple of minutes at most. Using a chef’s tongs, flip it and allow it to become golden for another couple of minutes. Depending on your kitchen, it might take slightly more or less. Make sure to check it constantly. It is better to flip it more than once per side, than to burn and destroy it.
While the first pitta is inflating and getting its tan in your pan, you can prepare the second one, so that as soon as you remove the first one from the pan, the second is ready to go in and so on.