Homemade Breakfast Pitas
This recipe makes about 32 small toaster-sized breakfast pitas. The dough is like butter. Well, it’s made with butter, maybe that’s why. Soft and pliable and dreamy to work with. My only reservation is that it requires a lot more yeast than conventional bread. [Note: since originally posting this recipe, I’ve experimented with less yeast, and have adjusted the yeast measurement accordingly].
Homemade Breakfast Pitas
Combine in a mixing bowl: 6 cups bread flour (whole wheat or some combo of white/whole wheat works well), 4-5 tablespoons honey, 3 teaspoons salt, and 6 teaspoons yeast. Add 4 tablespoons melted butter and 2 1/2 cups room-temp water. Stir well until blended. Knead for 5-10 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic (add flour or water as needed to reach desired consistency). The dough should be moist-ish, but not sticky.
Let rise, covered, in an oiled bowl, for an hour or two.
Preheat oven to 450.
Punch down the dough, divide in half, then divide each half into 8 pieces. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes. Then, flour a clean surface, divide each dough lump in two, and, using a rolling pin, roll each small lump into a flat circular shape, about 1/8-inch thick, or thicker, if you like a thicker pita. (It’s a lot of dividing, so note that each half makes approximately 16 small pitas).
If you have a baking stone, use it. If not, flip over a cookie sheet (or two), sprinkle with water, then place as many pitas as you can on the back of the cookie sheet–I fit six on each tray. Bake until the dough puffs up, about 4 minutes. Remove and cool on rack. Apparently, if you leave the pitas in the oven too long, they won’t unpuff.
Note: If you want to replicate the store-bought breakfast pitas, try adding, in small amounts, dried fruit, seeds, and/or spices at the combining or kneading stage of the recipe. My kids can’t agree on which fruits/seeds/spices would be acceptable, so I’m sticking with the plain recipe for now. Plain also works well as a flat hamburger or sandwich bun.
Keep the pitas fresh by freezing them. They thaw out quickly in the toaster. Slather on honey and peanut butter, and in our house, at least, the day has a happy beginning.
(adapted from the Joy of Cooking)
Sources of inspiration
Little wee writing thought to record for future use (I hope) … I’ve noticed that I write the good stuff, the inspired stuff, in small batches, often unexpectedly, though also often when I have the time to hang around and spiral slowly down deep. The corollary of that phenomenon is that I spend many a writing day fooling around, sitting around in front of the computer, slightly bored, not inspired, and writing nothing of any substance or use. (And I don’t mean blog entries, because I consider those relatively useful, and, even, occasionally, substantial). I mean, I write nothing of use. Period. Type, type, type, only to realize that a particular story or a particular take on a story is not meant to be; worse, that it isn’t a necessary story. It doesn’t long to be. (Though sometimes these ideas get recycled many years later). (So, maybe not useless, or not always useless).
Ahem. Nice circular thinking here, OCM. Very clear-headed at 10:41pm, after a good night run around the snowy neighbourhood.
My point. I had one. I want to give myself the freedom to do something else on those writing days of useless effort. Because the writing will get done–it gets done when a necessary story arises and must be told. It does. That’s how I write the keepers. Yet I feel guilty because only a few days each week are meant for writing, and I go to great effort and some expense to clear the house of children, in order to write. And then along comes a writing day when I’m not inspired, not at all. What the heck to do? Can I free myself of the guilt and …. and there my imagination pulls up short. And, what? Go for a walk or a run? To a yoga class? Play the piano? Read a book? Write a letter? It has to be something spontaneous, not planned, something flexible. It doesn’t have to be the same something every time, either. I’m terrified of losing my discipline; but maybe all this discipline is robbing me of experiences, of sources, of alternative creative outlets that could create connections in my mind; and it’s the connections that invent necessary stories.
Maybe there are some new year’s resolutions waiting for me after all. I am a generalist, and I wonder what it would feel like, what it would take, to be passionate about something more specific. Being a good writer is a fine and lovely thing, but being a good writer without a subject is futility itself. The book I’m writing has a very specific subject, and it’s occupied my mind for a number of years; and I’m seeing an end in sight. What comes next? What are my obsessions, my subjects, my loves?
Word of the year … I’ve got one; but I’m holding out for another post to share it. I don’t have that post in me tonight.
Happy Place
Best thing about stepping away from writing week was coming downstairs and appreciating the simple pleasure of doing the dishes. That’s a hard thing to appreciate most of the time, but it’s such a satisfying task: the kitchen is messy, you do some work, and it’s clean again. I like that kind of reward: immediate, requiring only elbow-grease.
My happy place is the kitchen. To relax, I bake. So, this weekend, I baked hermit squares, and homemade breakfast pitas. The breakfast pitas were an exciting discovery. The recipe is insanely simple (yeast, flour, water, salt, honey, and BUTTER). Since this was a first try, I made them without any additions, but may try adding some dried fruit and sweet spices, to amp up the breakfasting pleasure. They freeze easily, and can be popped into the toaster and topped with honey and peanut butter. And since breakfast pitas happen to be one of the last must-buy non-local prepared foods in our cupboards (along with rice crackers, almond milk, and some pasta), I’m pleased to find such an easy and tasty replacement. We’re trying them out with hamburgers for tonight’s Albus-designed supper of hamburgers and homemade french fries. (Albus-designed and Kevin-executed, it must be said).
Our family is edging toward food-weirdness, I realize. Or let’s call it eccentricity. We no longer buy cereal except for special occasions (I make big batches of granola instead). I bake almost all of our bread. I’m adding breakfast pitas to that, starting now. We have glass jars of homemade yogurt lining the fridge. I freeze huge batches of chicken stock for future soups. After-school treats are homemade bars or cookies or popcorn. My favourite snack, currently, is pickled beets and turnips–also homemade (my other favourite snack, kim chi, I’ve not been able to replicate to satisfaction).
Well, we don’t make cheese or butter, but then again we don’t have a cow. Don’t worry by-law officers, no plans for a backyard dairy.
Often, I open the fridge and it looks kinda bare. But the emptiness is deceiving. It’s just that the raw ingredients are stored elsewhere, waiting to be made into meal. I like the way we eat. I love the way it tastes, and, the preparation is my favourite part. A good weekend afternoon, at least in part, is spent with the radio on, measuring and pouring and kneading and filling the house with good smells, while putting away food to feed my family for the coming week.
Sunrise, Sunrise
What amazes me is how something doesn’t exist, and then it does; and when it does, it seems always to have existed.
I want to write something about this writing week, but all I can think of to say is that I’m done. I’m done with the writing week. But I’m also done with the bulk of the writing. I stayed up late working last night, pausing only to dash out to a yoga class in between daytime writing and nighttime writing. And today, a really amazing story came.
So, I’m done.
Tinkering, up next.
Writing Day: The Fourth
Writing about writing while writing. I’ve struggled with this over the years. I want to shout: Great day! or Terrible day! or Day of massive frustration and doubt! I guess that’s okay. But it can be misleading. The creation of a project stretches over such a long period of time that the emotions on an individual day say very little about its overall progress. It’s like taking your temperature and trying to extrapolate from one reading your health for the next six years.
Yesterday was frustrating.
But I begin today with hope. The process is so full of walls–slamming up against them, full stop, bewildered, is this it? And then checking out the terrain. Hang on, I could dig under, or build a ladder or a flying contraption, or blast through, or turn and see where that little path in the grass is leading, the one I hadn’t noticed before. The process is full of mini-breakdowns and heartbreaks, followed by mini-revelations and renewed committment.
I was up till after midnight, fomenting ideas. I wonder what will come of them today.