I was very intrigued seeing the process of making Turkish pita online. The process proved to be exciting, and the bread itself exceeded all of my expectations because of its softness and light texture. It is a great addition to any meal. Thank you Maya for the recipe and inspiration!
| Ready in: 5-6 hours | Serves: 4-6 people |
| Yield: 2x400g pitas | Units: US, EU |
Ingredients
Sourdough Starter
- 10g sourdough starter
- 60g water
- 50g all purpose flour or bread flour
- 10g rye flour
I always feed starter with 90% all purpose flour and 10% rye. Which makes it nice and strong.
Please note, summertime ratio for overnight feeding is higher (1:10:10) compared to wintertime( 1:6:6), because of the temperature difference. Depending on the strength of the starter, you can change the ratio.
Learn how to make starter from scratch here.
Main Dough
- 60g sourdough starter
- 320g bread flour
- 230g water
- 30g melted butter
- 9g salt
- 1g dry yeast
- 1 tbs honey
Topping
- 1 tbs of plain yogurt
- 2 yolks
- sesame seeds fir dusting
Directions
Night before
- 10 pm add starter to the water and whisk together, add flour, mix well, cover loosely, let sit at room temp 70-75F till next morning until it reaches the peak (10-12 hours), it should at least double (starter isn’t strong enough), or triple in size(strong starter).
Next morning
- 8 am mix water, honey, salt,with yeast and sourdough starter until dissolved add flour, and melted butter, mix all together, until no dry flour remained, cover, let rest 30 min for autolyse (during the autolyse stage the flour absorbs the water, becoming fully hydrated. This will activate gluten development). Dough will look sticky, but don’t worry it will come up together with following folds.
- 8.30 am. Perform nice stretch and fold, round the dough(it should become less sticky)and let rest covered at 74-76F/23-24C for 30 min.
- 9 am perform 2st coil fold. Round the dough, cover and let rest for 30 min.
- 9.30 am 3rd coil fold. Round the dough, cover and let rest for 1 hour.
- 10.30 am 4th coil fold. Round the dough, cover and let rest for 30 min.
Note: by the time when 4th coil folding will be done, dough has to look nice and smooth with visible signs of fermentation. If not, perform another folding in a 30 min.
- Sprinkle work surface with semolina flour.
- Dump the dough on a work surface, divide in 2 pieces, round each piece and make sure they are generously covered with semolina flour(this will help to prevent sticking.
- Place each dough on a separate piece of parchment paper.
- Cover, let proof for 1-2 hours.
- Dough has to get bigger and puffier.
- Preheat oven to 475F
- Prepare the topping by mixing yogurt with egg yolks.
- Pour yolk mixture on top of the dough. Spread it around with your hand.
- Poke the dough with your fingers, by creating a circle around the edges, and then by making parallel lines all over the surface of your pita.
- Turn on its 90 degrees and made another set of parallel lines, creating squares.
- Sprinkle sesame seeds on top of each pita.
Note: make sure to press the dough with your fingers deep enough (don’t afraid to make some holes). Because if dough won’t be pressed enough, pita will get puffy as balloon, and no pattern will remain visible.
- As soon as you will transfer pitas to the oven, lower the temperature to 350F.
- And bake pitas until golden brown for 20-25 min.
Enjoy!
Thank you very much for the recipe. You mentioned using 10% rye flour as you always do but this time it is 20% ?
Thank you fir your answer
Hi!
It won’t make any difference. You can do 10% or 20%
👌
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Ciao, si può fare solo con lievito di birra? Per lievito madre parli del liquido ? Grazie
I’ve tried to follow this recipe and am completely lost. Under “Next Morning” it says to add flour and water but not how much. Is it the same amount as listed in the previous step? This is very confusing.
Hi Bertrand – I am in the process of making this recipe as well. Refer to the quantities in the Main Dough recipe for the “Next Morning” amounts. I am making Natasha’s recipe and Maya’s recipe side-by-side to see how they compare. Natasha has us making a sourdough starter the night before and Maya has us using our sourdough/or discard starter the same day. From the photos, Natasha has a more open crumb than Maya’s final product and Maya bakes in a convection oven with the fan on. Can’t wait to bake these off! Good luck ~
Cheryl, thank you so much for exploring both recipes.
I would love to hear your feedback 🙏
Sorry for confusion.
Next morning you need to use ingredients for the Dough
Hello Bertrand.
At 10pm the night before, mix the starter ingredients together to make the sourdough starter amount required. By doing this, the starter should be very active from the feeding and ready to go.
The next morning, you will mix the volume of starter required with the ingredients found in main dough.
Hope that helps.
Thank you, Mike 🙏
Thanks for the recipe. The bread came out very nice. One problem: the amount of salt (12g) seemed too much to me, I used 10 grams the bread was salty.
Thank you for your feedback 🙏
I think it says 9gr not 12gr?
Great recipe. I messed up and added the whole starter to the recipe because I’m used to making a levain. Perhaps draw attention to the fact that not all will be used, just 60g? Thanks for sharing! Making for my husband for Eid 🙂
Hi!
No worries, it should work any way. If the dough will be too runny, add little more of flour.
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. Just tried your recipe as a Turkish man of which I am familiar indeed but your hybrid recipe is so successful and so delish, I am proud of you with my kind regards, Tezer
Thank you!
I’m so happy you liked it 🙏
Hi
Can you make it with just sourdough instead of using the 1 g of yeast?
Hi!
Yes!
Use 1% of yeast from total amount of flour.
Hi, thanks for the recipe. I want to prepare and my question is, is it possible to replace the butter with olive oil and the honey with molasses/silan? We are vegans. Thank you Yael
Hi!
Yes!
You can replace butter with oil and honey with molasses
Thank you so much 🌺🙏
How much dry yeast to use if I substitute with yeast instead of starter?
1% from total amount of flour