I ♥ My Pita 
Bread-baking 101 is not a class I’m getting an A in!
I took the “Your First Loaf” recipe from The Fresh Loaf and gave it a whirl. My yeast did not activate which means the dough never got bigger and it never really turned into bread.
I didn’t want to waste the dough so I told my husband in my best, “I know things! Believe me!” voice…
They didn’t have the resources to throw bad dough out in the 1800′s so we better get crackin’ on what we can make happen right here with this bread-tastic failure.
He looked at me warily. At least I think it was warily. His one eye was all scrunched up and he kind of looked like Popeye but without the pipe. That’s warily, right? He looked like he was thinking Not Great Thoughts™ about my cooking skills while sort of half-shrugging his shoulders like, “alright but if this goes bad too I am SO making fun of you.”
I took that as a hugely positive response and got down to it.
First, I rolled some out really flat. Like, super flat. I was hoping it would turn into a cracker or wasa bread or something crispy and delish. About this same time the mini-ball I’d put in the oven to see how it was going to turn out that way was ready and I brought it out and cut it.
It was pretty much the exact opposite of bread. Not light, not fluffy, not crusty. Just…dense and heavy and a little gummy. We couldn’t actually tell if it was done or not. So…if I die from undercooked yeast it wasn’t from that kind of yeast infection. Tell my friends, they deserve to know.
My cracker on the other hand was cooking like gangbusters. I know because it was about the size of a small balloon in the oven. Totally freaked me out when I looked in there because it was really poofy and I was thinking crackers are not poofy and what is going on. I took it out (it was cooked, I was – mostly – positive) and when I put a knife through the middle it was…hollow.
I’d made a PITA!
I felt like I’d unlocked some special level on some game where you go to where they make pitas and made a pita and got a whole bunch of bonus experience points for stumbling across a pita recipe. When I told my husband I was going to roll it even thinner and fill it with meat and potatoes he looked at me, again, like I was crazy.
But you know, he looks at me that way a lot so I don’t take it too personally. Maybe I am a little odd. It’s okay.
We threw some beef broth into a pot and put our now-dumplings in.
An hour later we checked them. I’m still not 100% they were cooked all the way through, but really, how do you tell? They seemed ok. Taste was a 6 on a 1-10 scale. Texture was an 8. They were DENSE. If I set them out and let them get all hard and dried out I could brick your CAR with these!
Not that I would. I love you. You know that.
But yeah. Made a pita, made dumpings, made an awful biscuit, and learned a little more about making bread.
I can’t wait until tomorrow – I have another batch of dough that will have been sitting for about 20 hours come morning! (That’s the no-knead super-easy bread recipe I used from Steamy Kitchen) and we shall see.
I’m pretty sure I used the wrong flour in everything, but it’s all learning!
I have to say, though, I’m really happy I figured out I have instant yeast in the fridge. No more mistakes after these two batches – at least not yeast based mistakes. There are so many more mistakes to be made!
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