Fresh Pitta Bread

Making pitta bread at home leads to a wonderfully thick pocket and, once you ignore rising time, is surprisingly easy. You can also put all the ingredients in a bread maker on a pizza dough setting to get the same result.

Ingredients:

• 250g strong white flour
• 1 sachet of fast action yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 150ml of water

Method:

1. Mix the flour, yeast, salt and olive oil in a large bowl.
2. Add the water and mix the dough together with your fingers.
3. Flour takes a while to absorb the water, so you'll need to work it with your hands for a few minutes to get a smooth dough. If it looks a little too dry and cracks then add a bit more water, about a teaspoon at a time, kneading for about a minute before deciding if it's still too dry.
4. Knead for a further 5 minutes, then cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave in a warm place for about an hour.
5. Place a pizza stone or the thickest baking tray you have into your oven and pre-heat to 250 degrees.
6. Tip the dough out onto a floured surface and fold it back in on itself until you've knocked the bubbles out of it.
7. Divide into 6 evenly sized balls.
8. Dust the surface with flour and use a rolling pin to roll each ball out into an oval about half a cm thick.
9. Remove the pizza stone from the oven and place the ovals on it before returning to the oven. Unless you have a huge pizza stone you'll have to do the cooking in two or three batches.
10. Cook the pitta in the oven for about 5 minutes. They'll puff up into big domes and you want to remove them from the oven as soon as they start to colour.
11. Cover the cooked pitta with a clean tea-towel and leave to cool before eating.

Makes 6 pitta bread.