This recipe for pita bread looks pretty good to me allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peppys-Pit … etail.aspx but I’m leery of a couple things. Forgive me if I seem paranoid, but the ambient dirt in the air here is really ridiculous.
- I don’t have a dryer here so I can’t really make my dish towels as clean as I would like for them to come in contact with my food. The recipe calls for me to put the pitas into a large brown paper bag and cover them with wet towels.
- I can’t really find a large brown paper bag like the ones we used to use in the states. Can I use a large glass bowl or large Pyrex baking dish?
Any other suggestions or recipes appreciated.
You could put them between paper towels, put that in a large bowl, and cover the bowl with something (optionally with a damp towel), I guess. It looks like the idea is that you don’t want the pitas to dry out as they cool. While they cool they are finishing baking, and giving off steam. Sealing them in the bag presumably traps that steam so they don’t dry out. But I don’t think you’d want them in direct contact with a wet towel or they could get soggy. The paper bag (or paper towels) can absorb any excess humidity.
Anyway, that’s just my theory off the top of my head. I’m not a pita expert, just a PITA. 
Give it a try, and let us know how it works. 
Edit: brown paper bags (for lunches) are available at many small neighborhood stores in Taiwan, the types that also sell bulk disposable chopsticks and plates, plastic bags and so on.
[quote=“Taiwan_Student”]This recipe for pita bread looks pretty good to me allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peppys-Pit … etail.aspx but I’m leery of a couple things. Forgive me if I seem paranoid, but the ambient dirt in the air here is really ridiculous.
- I don’t have a dryer here so I can’t really make my dish towels as clean as I would like for them to come in contact with my food. The recipe calls for me to put the pitas into a large brown paper bag and cover them with wet towels.
- I can’t really find a large brown paper bag like the ones we used to use in the states. Can I use a large glass bowl or large Pyrex baking dish?
Any other suggestions or recipes appreciated.[/quote]
I’m a little puzzled by the dryer-clean towel connection, but anyway.
First off, they like you to use a paper bag because moisture can escape from it but only gradually.
Are you sure you can’t find a big enough paper bag?
Anyways, you’re really being a bit of a Nervous Nellie here, as me Ma would say, for the love of Pete, if conditions here were really that filthy, AND/OR your personal consitution was that delicate, you’d have keeled over dead typing your message.
You’re going to encounter a billion times more and nastier air/surface borne beasties from the eskimolator handrail in the MRT or just breathing on your average city bus.
And whatever you do, stay out of Tu Cheng, you probably won’t make it out of the MRT station without turning inside out like the baboon in The Fly.
At any rate, good luck with your cuisine. 
ps Florida Bakery sells pita bread for about what you’d pay for ingredients, or less.
Just saying is all.
Yeah, something like that. For some breads, after baking them I let them cool an hour or two, then move them to an open-top paper bag for a few hours or overnight, then after that close the bag. I guess they want these pita to stay very soft, but note that if you trap too much moisture, they could go bad (mold) more quickly, especially when it’s hot out.
Notice also how in bakeries, they’ll often have the bread bagged but the tops open, and they seal them when you buy it. Another kind of moisture control. If you seal them too early, the bread either gets soggy or molds too quickly. But if you don’t bag them at all, they get dry, or aren’t convenient to handle (e.g. sliced bread).
Yeah, something like that. For some breads, after baking them I let them cool an hour or two, then move them to an open-top paper bag for a few hours or overnight, then after that close the bag. I guess they want these pita to stay very soft, but note that if you trap too much moisture, they could go bad (mold) more quickly, especially when it’s hot out.
Notice also how in bakeries, they’ll often have the bread bagged but the tops open, and they seal them when you buy it. Another kind of moisture control. If you seal them too early, the bread either gets soggy or molds too quickly. But if you don’t bag them at all, they get dry, or aren’t convenient to handle (e.g. sliced bread).[/quote]
Yeah, like they do at the bagel maker’s (mmmmm fresh bagels :homer: ).
There’s something about the brown paper.
I wouldn’t be sure it would necessarily work in a super humid hot place, though.
Finally got a chance to make Pita… I got paper bags from McDonalds. Anyway… I made the pita but I was a little disappointed. I did not get much of a pocket. I think I rolled them too thing. I’m not quite sure.
I’ll give it another try when there is more time. I don’t think I’m a fan of soft breads. It seems kinda of chewy. It’s been a longtime since I’ve had a genuine Pita bread. I’ll look it up at Florida Bakery if I’m ever in Taipei.
Any Pita in Kaohsiung?
On an other note, I want to start trying to use my oven instead of the bread machine but I don’t trust the temp in many consumer ovens. This is a recreational thing so I can’t justify professional model. My oven is a Tatung TMO-V23B. A basic two burner oven. I can set the time and temp.
I had that trouble the first time too, but I don’t think mine were too thin. I definitely I read something about having to make sure the baking surface is VERY hot (bake right on a pizza stone or cast iron griddle if possible, and preheat the oven to the max for a long time, like an hour), and someone once said something about patting the pita back and forth between wet hands right before slapping it on the cooking surface (I’m not sure that’s necessary). Plus you have to get the thickness right (or so I’ve read, over on thefreshloaf.com). Oh, and some say to let the dough rest, covered, to proof awhile after rolling or patting them out. I haven’t accumulated enough experience on pita to say definitively yet, though, as my breads are usually hearth-type boules.
You can get an oven thermometer to check that; get an all metal one that can go in the oven at any temp. Make sure you preheat the oven well, even up to an hour on max, if you’re baking crusty breads. You lose a lot of heat when you open the oven door. You can preheat to 25-50 degrees higher than the target temp, and load the bread quickly, with minimal opening of the door (an assistant helps), then turn that temp back down to the target temp. This helps a bit.
Dump the oil and sugar and pre-heat the oven tray while the oven heats up, does the trick for me. I don’t always get a great pocket, but usually 4/5.