Healthy Fresh-Milled Pita bread

MAKES ABOUT 20 PITAS,

ABOUT 7-INCH DIAMETER.

Sifted hard wheat flour 719 g (5 cups)

Water 475 g (2 cups)

Extra-virgin olive oil 48 g (3 tablespoons)

Dry yeast 4 g (1 teaspoons)

Sea Salt 21 g (3 teaspoons)

MIX. Measure the freshly-milled flour and set aside. Combine the water, oil, yeast, flour, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix with the dough hook on low speed for one minute, then switch to medium speed and mix until the bread clings to the sides of the hook and clears the sides of the bowl, about another six minutes. The mixer will really get rocking and rolling, so do not leave it unattended or it might just walk off your countertop. A damp towel placed under the mixer will minimize this scooting around. (This trick also works well to keep cutting boards in place, too.)

BULK FERMENT. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and cover with a tea towel or slip a plastic bag, plastic wrap, or beeswax wrap over the bowl if the room is very dry. Leave to rise at room temperature (65oF to 75oF) for 1½ hours. The dough should nearly double in size.

SHAPE. After bulk fermentation, place a baking stone on a rack set about two-thirds of the way to the top of the oven. Preheat your oven to 500oF. Turn the dough out onto a floured countertop and divide it into 20 pieces. Keep in mind that making too many unnecessary cuts will make the dough tougher to shape, so get a sense of the amount of dough you need with the first few pieces and then try to get close to the correct size for the rest of the pieces in one or two tries. They certainly don't need to be exact. Round each piece by patting out gently and tucking four sides in toward the center. Then tighten it into a ball by turning it over onto a dry part of the countertop, cupping your hand over it, applying gentle pressure, and rotating your hand in a circle, kind of dragging the seam against the counter to seal the seam and tighten the surface. The seam should roll around but stay in contact with the countertop as you drag the dough in a circle, increasing the surface tension and rolling it into a ball. With practice you'll get a perfectly round ball, but if you're having a hard time, balls for pitas don't have to be perfectly round. Cover all the balls with a tea towel.

Gather some flour for dusting, a rolling pin, a timer, tongs or hot pads, another tea towel, and a plate for stacking the baked pitas on as they cool. Dust a small area on the countertop generously with flour. Take the first dough ball and flatten it with the pin. Flip it and roll it out more. Keep flipping, rolling, and rotating until you get a circle about seven inches in diameter, dusting it with flour as needed to prevent sticking. The circle should be very thin, about 1/8 inch thick. Set it aside and repeat with a second dough ball. If your baking stone can comfortably hold three pitas, you can roll out a third dough. The pitas will be baked in batches, and every few rounds, turn your broiler on to blast more heat to the top of the oven. Then turn your broiler off and turn the oven back to 500oF and continue to bake. You open the oven a lot in this recipe because of all the batches, and the broiler helps recover the heat that gets delivered to the top of your pitas. If you don't have a broiler, expect your oven to cool more as you bake, later rounds may take longer than the first ones. Try not to open the oven unnecessarily.

BAKE. Set your timer to 45 seconds. Open your oven, pull out the rack, and quickly but carefully lay each rolled pita on the hot stone. I make this a bit more efficient by draping two or three pita rounds over my forearm; this leaves my hands free to open the oven and pull out the rack. Then the pita rounds are right there to lay out on the hot stone. Quickly push the rack back, close the oven, and start your timer. The pitas will be done in about a minute, give or take, depending on your oven, so start checking at 45 seconds. In a perfect world, each pita will inflate like a balloon with one large bubble, it will have singed in a spot or two, and it will still be soft and just barely done inside, so when you put it under a towel, it will steam itself. My ideal flavor comes when the pitas bake really quickly and burn just a touch, but not all ovens get hot enough. Know that pitas can go from soft and perfect to crispy crackers quickly, so get them out of the oven before they dry out. When they come out of the oven, they are full of hot steam. Use tongs or hot pads to grab them and transfer them to a plate.

Cover with a tea towel to allow the baked pitas to steam and soften.

Roll out another set of pitas and bake them off. To keep the pitas warm and soft, I like to bury the freshly baked pitas in the middle of the stack and cover the whole stack in a tea towel. That way the new hot pita steams itself and its neighbors. Once you have the hang of things, you can roll up while you bake and minimize downtime. Troubleshooting tip: if your pitas aren't fully puffing, they probably aren't being rolled thin enough or don't have enough top heat. Pitas are best fresh, but they do keep for several days in an airtight container at room temperature.

OPTION

If you don't have a baking stone, you can use a cast-iron pan in the oven. Even better, if you have a cast-iron griddle, you can bake two pitas at once.