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Written recipe: https://waleedasadi.com/p/authentic-levantine-pita-bread
Homemade Pita has been an absolute game changer for me. It completely outweighs the convenience of store bought. Once you taste it, you’ll notice the flavor, texture, and overall feel is just unmatched. It’s really a simple and straightforward recipe with the most difficult part being patience. Take your time, don’t rush, and you’ll forever change the way you see pita.
0:00 Intro
2:15 Weighing All Ingredients
5:44 Mixing & Kneading Dough
7:53 Dividing & Shaping
9:35 Rolling & Prepping to Bake
11:24 Baking The Pita
13:20 Final Result
13:50 Outro
47 Comments
I learned to make "Lebanese bread" in the 1990s from Aunt Lizzie, an early 20th century immigrant from Lebanon who was my in-law at the time. She basically provided bread to the entire town. She had a Hobart mixer and two old gas ovens in her basement. Same dough recipe, but her bread was thin and big, about 10-12". She spent most of every day down there in her ratty old sweater, smoking cigarettes, making bread. She didn't use a peel to remove the bread when it puffed up, though. She stabbed the puffed up bread with a screwdriver to pull it from the oven.
I did call it "pita bread" in front of my in-laws once and they snapped "It's not pita bread it's Lebanese bread. Pita bread is Jewish."
I don't make it often for many reasons, but this old white woman from Alabama is lucky to have had the chance to learn to make my own Lebanese bread.
❤
Marquq next ?
Time is indeed a critical ingredient! Temperature matters too, which is how overnight fermentation in the fridge works so well (and warm fast fermentation results in a blander tasting bread).
Yeast is a complex subject. It isn’t one commodity product (like white sugar) – different yeasts will give different tastes (ask a brewer or winemaker) but it is usually glossed over in bread making. Hence it is worth trying different yeasts for yourself.
Precision matters for quantities (so use a digital scale and – make it easy – use grams for everything, even water). Actually the yeast quantity precision is the least important because time and temperature adjustments allow easy compensation.
Waleed – one small tech point – your scale reading doesn’t show properly on your camera. It is probably due to clashing frame rates and the scale display refresh. Scales are silly cheap these days and for future videos you might want to find one where the display is readable on the video… 😊 (an lcd might show better than a led).
why did I think that thumbnail was a cat sitting in the oven? lmfao
Watching the pita puff up is the most satisfying thing! Thank you for sharing!! 🍉🫶🏻🇵🇸
Walid, thanks for all your great work I thoroughly enjoy your videos, except for 1 huge issue..😊
Walid please, please, please, close the top of that box of Olive oil on your counter and move it to the darkest spot in your home.
Then please 🙏, get a dark bottle for the Olive oil in the kitchen. Unfortunately you probably just killed off all the and Polly phenomena's in the Oil. This is one of the most important things for Olive oil..
Keep up the good work
Ending this video with olive oil and za’atar 😮💨 also that olive oil is amazinggg game changer!!
Notice this home made is thick sides, excellent for sandwiches, unlike store bought that is so thin sides it can't hold anything.
Yum! Thank you for sharing this!
I "bake" my pita on a carbon steel crepe pan on a burner and it is fun to watch the bread puff. I have found that if you do it this way, you need to flip the bread multiple times or one side of the bread will be thick, and the other will be thin, which can ruin the pocket. Fresh pita is so good. By the time it is bagged and shipped to a grocery store, it has lost some of the fluffiness. Right off the stove, it is soft, fluffy, and delicious.
Mic drop
Thanks! This and a bowl of olives is pure heaven!!
The pita on your screen cap looks like a seal.
I make my khubs exactly the same way👍 Thanks very much for sharing
Awesome Waleed! Can't wait to try this! Excellent instructions ❤
Respect for breadmakers
lt's here it's here it's HERE❣️❣️❣️❣️ Thank you THANK YOU❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️ I've been so looking forward to this❣️
Woohoo! Khubz handmade by Waleed 😊🖤🫂 I was told specifically by some Syrian elders that YOU MUST MAKE IT BY HAND or it doesn't taste right! Lol this looks fantastic!!
من النهر إلى البحر، ستكون فلسطين حرة. 🤲🇵🇸🖤
A better way to roll dough into a ball is to cup your hand around it and roll it around on the counter. Don’t use flour. The friction between the dough and the counter shapes dough balls perfectly.
No one ever explained the purpose of salt in regulating yeast sugar consumption in fermentation…thank you for sharing techniques👍👍❤
So pita bread means bread bread then…
Za’atar changed my life. Love it with extra extra fresh thyme and garlic. Can’t wait to roll out my first pitas. Thanks man!
I’ve been wanting to make your hummus recipe and now I gotta add your pita to the list!! I love the art of baking bread, I’ve been making sourdough the last few weeks and it’s so rewarding to make your own bread
You making lebanese bread, khobz Libnani
When you think our parents and grandparents didn't have a scale and a calculator to mesure 60% and 40% of everything 😂 shout out to the old generation. Thank you for sharing. Did your Mujaddara two days ago.
Great to see the real time baking of the pita! Have you ever tried adding a bit of wholemeal flour as opposed to all white plain? Gives it a nice nutty flavour.. and فلسطين الحرة ❤
I thought this video was about using sourdough starter to make pita breaf
Did I miss it? How much flour?
I've been waiting for this recipe!
It looks amazing. Do you happen to have a sourdough version? Thank you!
We have been eating and attempting to to make basic Arab/ middle eastern dishes and we are definitely going to attempt this recipe thanks free Palestine!
Chill out music and bread making film equals perfection vibes! Thanks for posting!
But grandmother made it from whole wheat flour not white wheat flour
Jordanian Zatar is very famous
Nice olive wood bowl 😊
Thumbnail looks like a blowfish 😂 how fluffy is this bread?!
Loved the content, keep it coming!
Love your explanations and detail. Lovely lovely pita, yum!
Proof that simplicity can be amazing! (Also yay for using weight/mass, I hate having to guess how TF someone measured "cups") ًشكراً جزيلا
Inspiring .. the best bread for me.. i put it in the air-fryer with excellent results, and amazingly no sugar added to the yeast. 🙏 i have a bread maker which has a setting for dough 👌🌷🙏
Ever heard of lepinja? it's a flatbread from the Balkans thats much like pits but a bit puffier. I like both but I prefer lepinja. I also mix in some different flours instead of just all white to give it a bit more nutrition. One of my grandmothers was Lebanese and the other Serbian so I ate both growing up. The pita we called Syrian btead with dirt when grandma added the zatar.
you've inspired me to give bread baking another chance!
Omg i literally started looking for this exact recipe yesterday!!
The rising in the oven is like magic 🤩
Thank you for your time and effort to produce this very informative video. Blessings