Pita bread with Lebanese Shish Tawook & garlic sauce

As spring arrives I see more green leaves in the wild forest here and fall in love with the beauty of the wild forest all over again. The post for today is my first time sharing experience to make pita bread. My eagerness to make this pita bread started from the Mama’s gotta bake‘s blog post ‘When you need a pita…Bake it yourself. It also reminds me of my friend and  Lebanese chef  I worked with and I used to taste his food almost everyday while I was work in the kitchen.  By the way, the great recipe I made today is from food lover blog (After I have checked about the recipe before just to make sure it works)

Lebanese food flavors of garlic and lime (Lemon) and olive oil… I marinated the Lebanese chicken over night in advance and make pita dough the night before and bake the next day. (so it is possible for lunch time)

The problem is about I don’t have a baking stone for bake pita bread. so I went to the river and got a rock in the round flat shape to replace. A second problem is making the garlic sauce with food processor while I was pouring olive oil then the machine just run out and not work again and a bigger size I accidentally throw the blade away. Poor me!  I changed to use a mortar as the ancient style but I am unsure so I stopped it and not complete the recipe and garlic sauce is not volume yet. but the garlic sauce is taste delicious besides it is a bit too spicy for not adding enough oil.

Indeed, Thank you for the blog and owner of these recipes. They are great recipes!! 🙂

Encourage to do it my own pita bread from Mama’s gotta bake ‘When you need a Pita…bake it yourself’ I was excited to make this Pita bread for the first time.

but …  Special equipment : baking stone!

3 cups flour, I use unbleached All purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon sugar

2 1/4 teaspoons yeast or one packet of active, dry yeast

1 1/4 – 1 1/2 cups water, at room temperature

2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

1. Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup water (37.77 degrees) by stirring and then stir in 1 teaspoon of sugar and let stand for 10 minutes until bubbly.

2. Then mix the yeast in with the flour, salt and sugar. Add the olive oil and 1 1/4 cups of water and stir together with a wooden spoon, until all ingredients form a ball. (If mixture is too dry, add more water, if too wet add more flour).

3. Using a bowl scraper, take the dough out of the bowl and place on a work surface dusted lightly with flour. You can knead by hand for 10 minutes, or in the bowl of an electric mixer on low speed for 10 minutes using a dough hook. If you do knead the dough in the electric mixer, you will still need to do more hand-kneading once you take it out of the mixer. The dough should be smooth and elastic, and spring back when you poke it with your finger.

4. When you’re done kneading the dough, take a large, clean bowl and lightly rub it with oil, or spray with cooking spray. Form a ball out of the dough and roll it around the bowl to lightly coat it on all sides with the oil.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for 90 minutes in a warm, draft-free spot. The dough should double in size. 

5. When it has doubled in size, punch the dough down to release the gases and divide it into 10 pieces. (I placed entire piece of dough on a kitchen scale, and divided the total weight by 10 so that all pieces weighed approximately the same.) Roll each piece into a ball and cover the balls with plastic wrap that has been lightly sprayed with cooking spray, and let dough rest for 20 minutes.

6. While the dough is resting, preheat oven to 400 degrees F, with a baking stone in it . If you don’t have a baking stone, you can turn a cookie sheet upside down and place it on the middle rack of the oven while you are preheating it.

7. After the dough has relaxed for 20 minutes, dust your work surface lightly with flour and place one of the balls of dough there.  Sprinkle a little bit of flour on top of the ball of dough and use a rolling pin to stretch and flatten the dough. You should roll it out into a 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick round.

8. Open the oven and place 2 pitas on the hot baking surface. I let them bake for about 4 minutes until they were baked through and puffy. You can let them bake longer if you like them crispier. I removed them with tongs, and let them cool on a baking rack.

Ingredients

Instructions

This is the All-Famous Lebanese Garlic Sauce – aka toum – Which is Used With Chicken Shawarma and Other BBQs.

• 3 heads of garlic, pealed
• 4-5 cups of vegetable oil (canola/sunflower/peanut etc…)
• 1 lemon, freshly juiced
• 1 teaspoon of salt (or to taste)

1. Before you start, ensure that all ingredients are at room temperature for a more reliable outcome. Also if you are using a large food processor make sure you use at least 3 heads of garlic.
2. Add the garlic and salt in the food processor and run for 10-20 seconds.
3. Stop processor, scrap garlic down the sides, then run processor for another 10-20 seconds. Repeat process 3-4 times until garlic starts to turn pasty and looks crushed. This is very important to reach before proceeding. At this point, turn the processor back on and keep it on until the end.
4. Start adding the oil to the processor at a very slow rate, in a very thin stream, each ½ cup at a time. After adding the first half cup you will start seeing the garlic emulsify and turn into a paste already.
5. Add ½ teaspoon of lemon juice very slowly, in a thin stream.
6. Wait on it a few seconds until the lemon juice is well absorbed.
7. Then go back to repeating the same process of adding slowly ½ cup of oil, waiting a few seconds, then adding ½ teaspoon of lemon juice until you’ve used all ingredients. This process should take 8-10 minutes.
8. If at any point you see that the paste is turning liquid, it may be an indication that you’ve added either too much lemon juice, or oil, or you may have added them at a fast rate. In this case your options may be limited especially if the paste completely breaks. Sometimes adding a cube of ice may help.