Making your own shawarma recipe? Make pitta too!
Recipe by: Frank Cohen
Makes 8 good sized pittas
How do you make your shawarma recipe taste better? By making your own fresh pitta bread of course…
Making pitta bread is remarkably simple and doesn’t take too long. You can either make it in advance and freeze, or make it fresh alongside making your choice of shawarma recipe – although I find I end up burning one or the other. Not a problem if there are two chefs.
The best thing about this recipe other than it’s simplicity, is that the dough only requires 20 minutes to half an hour resting time giving you an ideal opportunity to cut up fillings and get the shawarma cooking.
Pitta ingredients:
2 and 1/2 cups bread flour
2 tsp good quality salt
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp active dried yeast
2 tbsp good olive oil
1 cup of warm water
Pitta instructions:
1. Add 1 cup of flour, the salt, sugar and yeast to a large bowl and mix.
2. Add the oil and the warm water before stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon for at least 3 minutes.
3.Gradually add the remaining flour while stirring
4. If the dough is messy looking and comes away from the sides of the bowl it’s perfect. If not and it’s too moist add a little more flour.
5. Lightly flour a work surface and empty the bowl onto it.
6. Knead the dough for at least 5 minutes
7. Turn oven on to 500F
8. Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll these into balls
9. Dust lightly with flour and cover with a damp towel
10. Leave for 20-30 minutes to “rest”
(this would be a good time to prep fillings, get the shawarma meat cooking etc)
11. Once rested, flatten each ball by hand and then with a rolling pin until they form discs approximately 3/16″ thick
12. Place these discs onto cooking foil directly on top of the oven shelf.
13. Bake for between 5-8 minutes when they should puff up.
14. Remove from oven, stack the discs and loosely wrap in kitchen foil or a tea towel. The pittas will flatten.
15. Remove each pitta as required, cut half an edge away and insert blunt knife into opening to create the pocket.
16. Add shawarma contents, roll and enjoy!
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Will definitly try this.