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My wife and I made a double-recipe of pita bread for a Greek dinner. In one recipe, I used 50% whole wheat — a finely ground flour chosen so the bran shards wouldn’t poke holes in the gluten membranes. (Successful pita breads depend on the dough’s ability to contain air, because the pocket forms in the oven due to captive steam.)

The other recipe used 25% wholegrain spelt, which I ground myself from berries on the finest setting my KitchenAid can muster. The spelt version also included about 10% oat bran, which I ran through the mill in hopes it too would be rendered less jagged. Why did I use only 25% spelt in this recipe? You might think that because spelt flour contains less gluten I feared compromising the dough’s ability to contain air. But in fact, I just ran out of spelt berries.

Pita bread requires an unusual oven technique. We rolled 100g lumps of dough into thin discs, maybe 1/8 inch thick and 6-8'' across. Placed directly on a hot baking stone, they balloon within three minutes. Ideally, they balloon and then rupture, and settle back down somewhat as the steam inside the cavity rushes out. If they stay inflated, they are susceptible to crisping, which is the death of pita. Better to be flat and pocket-less than crisp!

The finished breads were really nice. Of course it helps to bury them in homemade tzatziki and humous, provided by our hosts and other guests. I think I ate my weekly allowance of wheat last night in one sitting.

Our host, who lived on Crete for several years, said “You won’t get pita this good in Greece.” It’s a sad comment on the decline of traditional culture that, if what he says is true, I can best a Greek baker within a few hours in my own kitchen. And I’m so far from Greek, I might as well be Turkish. The closest I’ve come to Greece is repeated viewings of Animal House. What I know about Greek traditions wouldn’t fill the hole in the olive where the pit came out.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The stuff they call bread in Italy is crap. The stuff they call beer in midwestern America is crap. The stuff they call food at McDonald’s is crap. I think I’m getting off topic though.

The pita recipe we used is from Crust & Crumb, one of my standby bread references. I’ve only made it twice and it worked well both times. I recommend cutting the yeast amount in half; just give the dough an extra hour to ferment before you put it into the cooler. This cuts the yeast stink in the finished bread.

By the way, I’m sure great beer can be bought everywhere in America, even in the cultural blight that spans from Sacramento to, erm, Philadelphia. My comment above refers specifically to the stuff we drank in college and the starving-artist days that followed (Burgie!).