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Quick & Easy Homemade Pita Bread

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Soft & delicious homemade pita bread. These puffy little pillows are ready from start to finish in less than 1 hour & taste so much better than store bought varieties! 

a stack of fluffy homemade pita bread

(This recipe was originally published on Aug 25th 2015 but has since been updated with new photographs and ingredient weights for accuracy).

I have been making my own bread for as long as I can remember but my usual pita bread recipe involves lots of kneading, resting and proving and although the end result is amazing I realize that most people don’t have the time or the patience for this. I decided that I wanted to simplify the process and come up with a Quick & Easy Homemade Pita Bread recipe that could be made from start to finish in under one hour.

The resulting pita breads are so easy to make and pretty quick as far as bread-making goes. Don’t let the fact you need to use yeast put you off. It’s not as scary as it sounds and the results are so worth the effort.

These quick and easy homemade pita breads taste so much better than store bought varieties and make a perfect accompaniment to falafel, hummus, and other dips. They also split easily so can be stuffed.

homemade pita-bread cut open with pile of uncut ones in the background

When you make these Quick & Easy Homemade Pita Breads, be sure to watch them for the five minutes that they are in the oven. They puff up dramatically within a few minutes and it is great to see this happen. If you have children helping you to make this recipe then they will love to watch them through the oven door.

When they are done and you remove them from the oven you will have little puffy pillow like pita breads. They deflate as they cool and end up resembling pita breads as you see in the store, only they taste so much better! Cover them with a clean dish towel while they cool to keep them nice and soft.

If you make these Quick & Easy Homemade Pita Breads I would love it if you could let me know how it went in the comments section below. You could even take some photos then tag me on Instagram @avirtualvegan and add the hashtag #avirtualvegan so I don’t miss them! I would love to see your pictures!

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Quick & Easy Pita Bread

Make your own soft & delicious pita bread. These puffy little pillows are ready from start to finish in less than 1 hour & taste so much better than store bought varieties!
Course Baked Goods
Recipe Type vegan
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 6 minutes
Servings 8 individual pita breads
Calories 235 kcal
Author Melanie McDonald

Ingredients

  • 325g | 2 cups wholewheat flour , strong wholemeal in the UK
  • 165g | 1 cup all purpose flour , strong white flour in the UK
  • 2.5 teaspoons instant yeast , or quick yeast
  • 1 teaspoon salt (optional - see recipe notes)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil (optional - see recipe notes)
  • 405mls | 1½ cups + 2 tablespoons lukewarm water , not hot and not cold

Instructions

  1. Add all the dry ingredients to a large bowl, making sure to keep the salt on the opposite side to the yeast.
  2. Add the olive oil and enough of the water to make a firm dough. I used 405 mls of water. You might not need all of it or you might need a few drops more. It depends on the flour you are using, humidity etc.
  3. Stir well with a spatula until the flour is absorbed and you have a shaggy dough.
  4. If the mixture looks a little dry add a few more drops of water very gradually.
  5. Scrape your mixture onto a clean and dry surface. If you think you will find kneading like this difficult then grease your surface and your hands with some olive oil. This will make it easier to handle. Try not to use more flour to knead on or add more flour during the process. If you do you risk your pita bread becoming dense and tough.
  6. Start kneading. If you are not experienced in kneading dough I recommend you watch a video of how to knead to help perfect your technique. You will need to knead for 7 - 10 minutes. Your dough will start out a little bit sticky but the more you knead the smoother and less sticky it will become. The dough is firm so quite hard to knead. That is normal. Keep going until it feels smooth and when it is in a ball shape and you squeeze it together on each side, it bounces slowly back to shape when you let go.
  7. Divide your dough into 8 pieces.
  8. Roll each piece out into a circle or oval shape about 3mm thick.
  9. Place on a lightly floured baking sheet (you will probably need 2 baking sheets ) and cover gently with clean, damp dish towels.
  10. Leave to rest for 30 minutes.
  11. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees F whilst you are waiting.
  12. After 30 minutes uncover your pitas and gently flip each one over. You will need to peel them off the tray but this should be pretty easy to do because of the flour underneath.
  13. Place into the hot oven and watch through the door (it's entertaining ;o)
  14. Bake for 5 - 6 minutes. They will have puffed up nicely but not be coloured at all.
  15. When you remove from the oven they may feel a little hard but cover with a dish towel and leave to cool and they will soften up.

Recipe Notes

These Quick & Easy Pita Breads keep well for a couple of days but can also be frozen. Place in a freezer bag and seal tightly. They do not stick together and it is easy to just pull one or two out as they are needed.

You can either let them defrost if you want to eat them cold or pop them straight in the oven from frozen on 350 for about 5 minutes or until they are warm through.

The salt in this recipe is optional. It will not affect the recipe if you omit it but it will affect the flavour a little.

The oil in this recipe is optional. If you omit it then add an extra tablespoon of water to compensate. If you are not worried about the fat content or calories then please add the oil as you will get a softer result. If you do not add the oil the recipe will work just fine but the pita bread won’t be quite as soft and will stale slightly quicker than it would if it had oil in it. Because of this if you don’t add the oil and you won’t eat them all on the day or day after they are baked then keep them in the freezer as per my note above.

Nutrition Facts
Quick & Easy Pita Bread
Amount Per Serving (1 pita bread)
Calories 235 Calories from Fat 23
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 2.5g 4%
Sodium 290mg 12%
Total Carbohydrates 44g 15%
Dietary Fiber 6.5g 26%
Protein 9g 18%
Calcium 2%
Iron 13%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.


Make your own soft & delicious pita bread. These puffy little pillows are ready from start to finish in less than 1 hour & taste so much better than store bought varieties!
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A Virtual Vegan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to amazon.com. I make a very small commission when you order from Amazon through one of my links. These is no extra charge to you at all. This very small income goes towards the costs of running this site (things such as web hosting fees, domain name fees, technical assistance,  ingredients, equipment & necessary software/hardware). This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  1. Okay, this may be one reason to see if I can find some organic yeast again. Or maybe I could find a way to adapt them using sourdough starter, yes? I have some extra starter on hand. Think I’ll give that a try. Thanks for a wonderful recipe. Excited to find this today!

    Reply

    • Thank you Kathryn. I have actually never tried these pita breads with my sourdough starter. I don’t know about yours but my starter is pretty slow and takes hours to prove a loaf of bread. If yours is the same then it probably wouldn’t work with these pitas as they are a quick version. I’m not sure the starter would have enough ooommph to get the pitas puffy in the oven when they cook so quickly.
      If you do try and it works let me know though!

      Reply

  3. Melanie,
    These look so good, that I can almost smell the fresh pitas baking. It sure will be fun to watch them puff up in the oven! We are crazy about pita and hummus at our house, so will make this soon

    Reply

  10. The thought of making bread from scratch always scares me. I have NO idea why. I need to suck it up and just try it because these looks so incredible!!

    Reply

    • Thanks Jenn! Pita is a great bread to start learning with, especially this easy recipe. Once you have mastered them you can move on to actual loaves of bread. The satisfaction you get from bread making is great. You need to try it!

      Reply

  14. I love Pita and have literally grown up eating it and remember how we used to get them freshly made in the large ovens from the local bakeries while I was growing up in the Middle East and we could witness the entire process going on in the open kitchen. The aroma wafting through the entire bakery always made me hungry! I make wholewheat pita at home now and my recipe is similar to yours; they always turn out great.
    Thanks for sharing! 🙂

    Reply

  17. I’ve always wanted to make these, but figured it would be really hard. Thank you for the easy recipe, now I’m going to try it!! Pinned it!! Thank you for sharing with us at the #HomeMattersParty

    Reply

  18. I have been wanting to make them and finally came around do to it this morning. I added some dry mint and they just left the oven and look really good and are even partially puffed. But the dough was a disaster. I don’t think I did anything wrong, followed your recipe almost entirely except that I used a bit more whole grain flour but once I poured in the water and started to knead the dough, it resembled a very dense Spätzle dough more than anything else. I was unable to knead since all the dough would stick to my hands and even after 10 minutes it was not kneadable. In the endI probably added at least half a cup of more flour and it was still very sticky so I used plenty more flour to cover the surface to form the pitas. I just pressed them down with my fingers because a rolling pin would just have stuck to them. Out of the oven they are really light and definitely not dense, and soft and fluffy on the inside and seem fine and smell delicious. I am definitely gonna give them another try, just maybe with half the water and go from there and see if more is actually necessary. Thanks for your amazing blog with all the delicious recipes! 🙂

    Reply

    • Hi Paula. Sorry to hear you had trouble with the dough but I’m glad you ended up with a good result regardless.I have had a few people send me feedback on this recipe on Instagram, Twitter etc and no-one else has mentioned having problems with the dough at all, but this is one of my early recipes and back then I just listed the measurements in cups. I have now started weighing everything and adding the weight and cups measurements to each recipe as I realize that how you fill the cups makes such a difference to the quantity of flour they hold. I have experimented with scooping, pouring and spooning the flour in and the weights vary considerably. I will hopefully get back to this recipe soon and add weight measurements which will make it much more accurate. Perhaps this is part of the problem you had.
      Also different brands of flour vary in absorbency considerably, and the time of year and the weather can also affect absorbency of the flour. Because of this the amount of water needed can and does change.I will add a note to the recipe warning of this.
      Having said that this dough is a very firm dough and is pretty hard to knead at first. It starts off a little sticky but after kneading for a minute or two the stickiness usually dissapears. A solution to stop dough sticking to your hands when kneading is to rub olive oil or some other liquid oil into your hands before you start kneading. You might want to try it next time. I usually do it when I’m working with really wet doughs like ciabatta and it really helps.
      I will make these pitas again soon and add the weight measurements to the recipe. I will also add some step by step pictures.I am pretty sure that’s where the problem lies. I have the day off work tomorrow so might well do it then if I can. I could also do with updating the photos while I’m at it!

      Reply

  22. This is the worst pita recipe in the history of pita recipes. The dough sticks to the bottom of the pan. The copious amounts of flour I put on the baking sheets made it worse. I hate this recipe. Thank you for wasting my time and dough.

    Reply

    • Sorry you had a bad experience with the pita breads. This is one of the most tested recipes on my blog and I make them myself at least once a month so I know for certain it works well. I also never have a problem with the dough sticking to my baking sheets.I don’t understand how adding more flour to the baking sheets made the problem worse. Perhaps we can troubleshoot what went wrong? Did you follow the recipe exactly? As in the same flours (a mixture of white all purpose and wholewheat), exact same quantities etc? Did you weigh your ingredients? Cup measurements are notoriously inaccurate and can cause unexpected results when baking. Also how much water did you use? It sounds like your dough may have been too wet if it was really sticky. The dough should not be sticky by the time you get to the rolling out stage and if it is then something has gone wrong somewhere. How is your kneading technique? If the dough isn’t kneaded effectively it will remain a bit sticky. Lots of questions but perhaps we can work out what went wrong if you can answer them :O)

      Reply

    • You are welcome! I live in Canada but am from the UK (Devon), so feel like I should, even though I don’t actually have many readers in the UK!

      Reply

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  4. […] You guys, I’ve made you a dip just in time for your summer parties! In Canada we have our 150th birthday to celebrate this weekend, then, a few days later, our U.S friends celebrate the Fourth of July.  Partying a-plenty, drinks a-flowing, and you know what happens then? The munchies. Without fail. So keep your guests (and yourself) happy by making a big bowl of deliciously Creamy Garlic Onion Dip and surround it with your favourite dippers. I am thinking tortilla chips, bread sticks, raw veggie sticks and warm homemade pita bread.😋 […]

    Reply
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