I finally gave it a try.

A friend recently recommended  The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book as a great whole grain bread baking book. I put the book on hold at the library and then when it finally came in I brought it home and it sat on the shelf for 3 weeks. It is due on Thursday and I thought I had better give it a least a look and maybe one recipe a try. I have been meaning to try to make my own pita bread so I found a recipe for pocket bread in this cookbook.
It was a nice rainy day so it was perfect for baking. First I had to grind my wheat into flour. I love having an electric wheat grinder. 6 cups of flour is ground so quickly. It used to take me a really long time to hand grind it. Plus the flour is ground so much finer.

The recipe for pita bread was so simple, flour, water, yeast and salt. I added a little bit of honey to the yeast water because I just felt like I needed to, but the recipe said it wasn't necessary. And then just let it raise and then raise again. Evidently the secret to pita is the quick baking of them.  I loved that the book explained the whole process and what was going on with the bread that made it puff up.

It was a little time consuming to roll out each of the pitas but the baking goes so quickly that before I knew it I had rolled and baked 20 rounds. When they had cooled and I cut them in half I was so impressed with my first attempt at this bread.  There were a few of them that didn't puff up. I must have been a little too rough on the dough when rolling them out. These made great pita chips. They tasted great with the hummus I made a few days ago. Hummus is another food I have been meaning to make but just never seemed to get around to. I just don't have sesame seeds on hand very often.

I am going to have to try to renew the book at the library. I need to give a few more recipes a try. I saw english muffins in there and a few others I wouldn't mind giving a try.  Thanks Jen for recommending this cookbook!

I need to make more pita. My kids seem to really love it. It may just be the novelty of it but it went really fast!
 

Sorry... none of these pictures are mine. My pita didn't look quite so nice as the ones in the picture, but my husband said many of his co-workers said they were great when he shared a few of them at lunch today.
I still haven't found my camera and am starting to think I need to just buy another one. I don't have the best record with cameras. I tend to loose them or drop them and damage them quite often. Does anyone have a good cheep camera they could recommend?