Pita

Background

Nearly every civilization makes some type of bread. Prehistoric people of 10,000 years ago baked bread. The residents of Mesopotamia, what is now Iraq, were known to use stones to grind grain to which they added water and then cooked over an open fire.

Excavations of ancient Egyptian cities show that they grew wheat and barley and used them to bake flatbreads. It is believed that the Egyptians discovered leavened or raised bread accidentally when a mixture of grain and water was left in a warm place, releasing the naturally occurring yeast and producing a puffed-up dough.

Before a process for making yeast was developed, bakers would often set aside a piece of unbaked dough from each batch. By the time the next batch was made, the reserved dough had soured, or fermented, by airborne yeasts. It was then mixed with fresh dough to make it rise. In 1665, an enterprising baker thought to add brewer's yeast to his reserved dough.

At first, grain was manually ground by rubbing it between two stones. Then, a mechanical process was invented, in which a cattle-drive stone revolved on top of a lower, perpendicular, stationary stone. In time, the cattle were replaced by water mills or windmills. By the late eighteenth century, a Swiss miller had invented a steel roller mechanism that greatly simplified the grinding process.

Commercial bakeries first appeared in the Middle Ages, as towns and villages were established. In addition to baking bread for sale, these bakeries would set aside time for people who still wanted to mix their own dough and then bake it in the commercial ovens. These were large brick ovens heated by wood or coal. The loaves were moved in and out of the ovens with a long-handled wooden shovel called a peel.

It may have been the Bedouins who first made pita bread. After a long day in the sun, traversing the desert, they made camp and prepared a modest respite. Powdered grain was mixed with water to make dough which was formed into flat round loaves. The loaves were placed over the bottom of the mixing vessel and baked over an open fire. This bread was used as a utensil, as well as for food.

In remote Arab villages, bread is still baked in backyard stoves. Some Arab and Israeli communities have community ovens or bakeries that set aside special hours for families to bring in their homemade loaves.

When Middle Eastern immigrants began moving to the United States in large numbers in the 1970s, they introduced Americans to their cuisine. Pita bread became a popular bread choice, especially because the absence of shortening and the small amounts of sugar make it a low-fat food. By the 1990s, the wholesale pita bread market was nearing $80 million in yearly sales. Most of the pita is baked by specialty bakeries in the East, West and Midwest. Commerical pitas are typically baked with unbleached all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour. They range in size from 4-10 in (10.16-25.4 cm) in diameter.

Raw Materials

Pita bread is made with grain flour, water, salt, and bakers' yeast. Harvested grain is ground according to the type of bread being made. Grains are composed of three parts: bran (the hard outer layer), germ (the reproductive component), and endosperm (the soft inner core). Whole wheat flour is made from the grinding of all three parts. White flour is made solely from the endosperm. Because the nutrient-rich bran and germ have been removed in the processing of white flour, vitamins and minerals are often added. Grain mills grind the flour and then sell it in bulk to commercial bakeries. The bakeries store the flour in 100,000 lb (45,400 kg) bulk silos until ready for use.

Yeast is a single-celled fungus with enzymes that extract oxygen from starches or sugars present in food. This causes fermentation and leavening (rising). In commercial production, yeast strains are fed a solution of molasses, mineral salts and ammonia. After the fungus completes growth, the yeast is separated from the solution, washed and packaged. It is either combined with starch and compressed into cakes, or ground into powdered form and mixed with corn-meal. Bakeries purchase bakers' yeast in bulk from outside suppliers.

The water used must be of the purest quality, not only because it will be used for human consumption, but also because the hardness and pH affect the properties of the dough. Most processors filter the water so that it is of medium hardness (50-100 parts per million) with a neutral pH.

The Manufacturing
Process

Mixing the dough

• Premeasured amounts of flour, salt, water, and yeast are blended in commercial mixers in several hundred pound batches. Some bakeries may add a mold retardant such as calcium propionate. Large motorized arms in the mixer knead the dough to the desired elasticity.

Extruding the dough

• The dough is scooped out of the mixing bowl and fed into an extruder that forms the dough into tennis-ball sized portions. Each ball is then dropped into cups moving on a conveyor belt.

First proofing

• The dough balls are allowed to rest and rise in the cups for approximately 15 minutes. This process is called proofing. In some processing plants, the dough is allowed to proof in one continuous layer before it is cut into individual portions.

Cutting and forming the pitas

• The dough balls are turned out onto a sheeter that travels on a linear conveyer belt. The sheeter passes under a series of rollers that press the dough into the desiredsized circles. If the dough is still in one layer, the rollers press it to a thickness of about 0.125 in (0.3175 cm). The flattened dough is then passed under die-cuts that create circular pieces. The excess dough, about 10%, is recycled back into the extruder.

Second proofing

• The circular loaves move into the top shelf of a rotating proofer. As they slowly move down to the bottom of the proofer, the rises again. They exit the proofer and are conveyed into the oven.

Baking the pitas

• The ovens are kept at a very high temperature, between 800-900° F (426.6-482.2° C). The pita loaves move quickly through the ovens where they are exposed to the high heat for about one minute. The combination of the high heat and flash-baking causes the water in the dough to turn to steam thus forming the pita pocket by separating the upper and lower crusts.

Cooling and flattening the loaves

• The baked pita loaves moves out of the oven and back and forth on a system of conveyers belt for about 20 minutes until they are cooled. Plant workers then manually flatten the puffed-up loaves. Burnt or undercooked loaves are discarded.

Slicing the loaves

• If the pita loaves are to be sliced in half, they are conveyed to slicing machines where rotating knife blades quickly slice the bread. The loaves can be cut individually or stacked in piles about six high and sliced.

Packaging

• Whether sliced or left whole, the pita are conveyed to the packaging area where they are stacked in a pre-determined amount and inserted into pre-printed plastic bags. Workers may close the bags manually with twist ties. Alternately, the bag openings may be fitted with a zipper tear-strip, in which case the bag is mechanically heat-sealed. The packaged pitas are loaded onto trays or into cartons for shipment. If the pitas are not going to be shipped immediately, they are flash-frozen and kept in industrial freezers that are regulated to a constant temperature of about 10° F (-12.2° C).

Quality Control

As a foodstuff, pita bread is subject to stringent government food processing regulations, including, but not limited to the percent of additives allowed, sterilization of plant equipment, and cleanliness of plant workers. In addition to adhering to these regulations, processors control the quality of their products to meet consumer expectations by installing checkpoints are various stages of the processing. At each inspection station, the pita are tested for appearance, texture, and taste.

Because of its high moisture content, 38-40%, bread is particularly subject to bacteria growth. While the baking process destroys most of the bacteria, bread is still susceptible to re-inoculation of fungi after packages. There are a number of methods used to combat this including fungicides and ultraviolet lighting.

Labeling regulations stipulate the plant list baking date, ingredients and weight on packaging. If the pita bread is marketed as an organic product, its processing must adhere to the Organic Foods Production Act that enumerates various requirements. Those that pertain to bread processing include prohibitions against treating seeds with prohibited materials during the growing season and strict rules for commodities grown with fungi, such as yeast.

Where to Learn More

Books

Habeeb, Virginia T. Pita the Great. New York: Workman Publishing, 1986.

Periodicals

Pacyniak, Bernard. "Kangaroo packs a wallop." Bakery Production and Marketing (April 24, 1990): 60.

"Pita sales zip along." Packaging Digest (September 1990): 42.

Sobel, Dava. "The Upper Crust." Health (December 1986): 45.

Other

Leon International, division of Middle East Baking Co. http://leon-intl.com/pitabread.htm.

[Article by: Mary McNulty]

"Pain in the ass." See digispeak.

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Recipe origin: Lebanon

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt

Procedure

1. Dissolve the yeast in 1 cup of warm water.
2. Sift together the flour and salt.
3. Combine the yeast and water with the flour and salt and mix well.
4. Work the mixture into a dough and knead for several minutes.
5. Cover the dough with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place for 3 hours.
6. Preheat oven to 350°F.
7. Divide the dough into 6 equal portions and roll into balls.
8. Using a hand or a rolling pin, pat and press each ball of dough into a 5-inch circle about ½-inch thick.
9. Place on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, or until the pita are light golden brown.

Serves 8.

This article is about the flatbread. For other uses, see Pita (disambiguation).

Pita

Pita topped with cucumber, hummus, and lamb and tomato
Origin
Region or state	Middle East
Dish details
Main ingredient(s)	Flour

Pita (also called and less commonly known as pitta or pide (Turkish), pite (Albanian), pitka (Bulgarian) is an often round, brown, wheat flatbread made with yeast.

Similar to other double-layered flat or pocket breads, pita is traditional in many Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines. It is prevalent from North Africa through the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, possibly coinciding with either the spread of the Hellenistic world or that of the Arab expansions under the banner of Islam.

In Greek cuisine, pita may refer to thicker breads made with yeast, for example souvlaki pita. In Cypriot cuisine, pitta is made roughly from the same materials as in Greek cuisine but differs in size and shape. It may also refer to foods using many layers of dough of thickness less than 1mm, usually with many different ingredients in between, forming savoury pies such as tyropita and spanakopita or sweet pies such as baclava.

The Indian flatbread form of roti is sometimes referred to as "Indian pita".

Pita roasted on an outdoor fire.

Contents 1 Etymology 2 Origin 3 Eating habits 4 Stuffed pita 5 See also 6 References

Etymology

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first mention of the word in English was in 1951, with references to Balkan, Greek, and especially Arab cuisine in the next three decades. The American Heritage Dictionary traces the word's origin to modern Greek for "pie," "cake," or "bread";. In Serbian it means pie in general. Another possible etymology is from a Romanian archaic word for bread, pită. An alternative etymology traces the word to a cognate for pine pitch, which forms flat layers that may resemble pita bread, which in turn may share an etymological origin with pizza (Italian for "pie"). The word spread to Southern Italy as the name of a thin bread. In Northern Italian dialects pita became pizza, now known primarily as the bearer of savoury toppings but essentially still a flat bread. Indeed in some parts of southern Italy, there are pastries called Pita, which are filled with spicy fruit and nuts.

Origin

Pita is now the western name for the Saudi Arabian bread called Khubz (ordinary bread), other breads of Arab, Egyptian, or Syrian origin, or kumaj (a Turkish loanword properly meaning a bread cooked in ashes), all baked in a brick oven. It is slightly leavened wheat bread, flat, either round or oval, and variable in size. The tenth-century Arab cookery book, Kitab al-Tabikh by ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, includes six recipes for khubz, all baked in a tannur, which is like the modern tandoor oven, in its Chapter 13.^[1] However, it is safe to assume that its history extends far into antiquity, since flatbreads in general, whether leavened or not, are among the most ancient breads, needing no oven or even utensil for their baking. However the first signs of flat breads occur in and around Amorite Damascus.^{[citation needed]} In the early centuries of our era, the traditional Greek word for a thin flat bread or cake, plakous, had become the name of a thicker cake.

Eating habits

Pita is used to scoop sauces or dips such as hummus and to wrap kebabs, gyros or falafel in the manner of sandwiches. Most pita breads are baked at high temperatures (850°F or 450°C), causing the flattened rounds of dough to puff up dramatically. When removed from the oven the layers of baked dough remain separated inside the deflated pita, which allows the bread to be opened into pockets, creating a space for use in various dishes.

In modern history (in the 1970s) much of pita's popularity in the Western world is due to this pocket. Instead of using pita to scoop foods, the pocket is filled with various ingredients to form a sandwich. These are sometimes called "pita pockets" or "pocket pitas". Certain manufacturers have taken steps in packaging to clarify the difference between pita (which has no pocket, and historically meant "flat") and pita pockets (which have pockets).^{[citation needed]}

In Turkey, pita (called pide, also refers to the pizza-like food) typically has a soft, chewy texture and is pocketless. The pizza-like foods called lahmacun is made with oval-shaped pieces of pide dough that are topped with finely chopped meat and herbs before baking. Pide also refers to another pizza-like food made of pide dough which is topped with different material; there are regional variations in the shape, baking technique, and the topped materials used where it can be said that every region has its own pide style. These pide's can include chicken, beef, cheese, potatoes, garlic and many other ingrediants.

In Greece, pita is eaten with dips such as tzatziki. Moreover it is part of the quintessential Greek fast food pita-souvlaki and pita-gyros. These types of sandwiches involve the wrapping of souvlaki or gyros with tzatziki, tomatoes, french fries, and condiments into a pita bread.

Stuffed pita

In the Balkans pita most often refers to a thin filo layered dish often containing cottage cheese, meat, spinach, leek or mushrooms. It may also be a sweet pie, filled with a cream cheese, grated apples, grated pumpkins ("bundevara") or sour cherries. Throughout much of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and Croatia, a kind of pita referred to as burek is also a street food. Stuffed pita is part of national cuisine of Bosnia and Herzegovina but it is popular in other parts of ex-Yugoslavia.

In Bulgarian cuisine, pita is served on special occasions. Its preparation and consumption have ritual meaning. For example, on the night before Christmas Eve, (Bulgarian: Бъдни вечер - badni vecher) each housewife prepares a pita and decorates it with symbols to bring fertility to the cattle and a rich harvest from the fields, as well as prosperity to each member of the household. She hides a nickel in it, and it is believed that whoever finds it in their piece will be the healthiest and the wealthiest of the family. Prior to marriage, a bride's future mother-in-law prepares a pita for the newlyweds and sifts the flour seven times, so that the pita will be soft as their future life together. Pita is also prepared when dear guests are expected. A traditional welcome in Bulgaria includes pita and salt or honey. The meaning of this ritual can be found in the expression "to welcome someone with bread and salt" (since bread is an important part of Bulgarian cuisine - and as a Bulgarian proverb says, "no one is bigger than bread", and the salt is the basic ingredient that gives flavour to every meal). This is how the hosts show that the guests are desired and that they wish to share their meal with them.^{[citation needed]}

In Israeli and Palestinian cuisine, it is the custom to eat almost everything in a Pita. Falafel, lamb or chicken shwarma and Kabab, omelets such as shakshouka (eggs and tomatoes) and hummus and other salads in a pita. This pita, however, is slightly thicker and smaller than the Lebanese version, and tends to be a mixture of whole and white wheats. This is not to be mistaken for Khubiz Saj, used to make the famous Palestinian dish Musakhan (and also often used in making shwarma). A pita-based dish unique to Israel is the Sabich, which has also received warm welcome by Israeli Arabs.

See also

• Flat bread
• Lafa
• Tortilla
• Bánh (Vietnamese variety)
• Bing (Chinese flatbread)
• Blintz
• Crêpe
• Pancake
• Chapati
• Piadina
• Naan
• Khachapuri
• Burek
• Gibanica
• Paratha

References

1. ^ Nawal Nasrallah, "Annals of the Caliphs' Kitchens: Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's Tenth Century Baghdadi Cookbook". Brill: Leiden, the Netherlands, 2007. pp. 118-126.

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