Greek Yogurt Pita Bread — Delectably Mine

I love soft, tender flatbreads, still warm from cooking. There’s almost nothing better! I’ve made pita and tortillas occasionally over the years, but I’ve been wanting to try Molly Yeh’s Greek yogurt pita bread for a while now. I just hadn’t gotten around to it until this weekend.

I love baking with yogurt, it tenderizes and adds a slight tangy flavor to whatever it is you bake and this recipe was no exception. I’ve posted the original recipe (with a few tweaks to the instructions) below, and I also posted my adaptation which used my leftover sourdough starter. Since I’ve been making a lot of sourdough bread recently I’m always on the lookout for ways to use up my discarded starter. This pita was a great option!

The dough was soft, tender, and easy to roll out. I made half a batch of the sourdough version and ended up making 8 pita (the original recipe called for you to make 12 for the full recipe, so this would be 6 for a half batch) and I thought they were a nice size. Not too big and not too small.

The original recipe calls for you to bake these in the oven. I decided to grill them instead which I find fun to do. They only took 1.5-2 minutes on the grill at around medium heat. I’m sure baking them as instructed turns out a good pita as well but at this point I can’t say for sure.

I served these with some lamb meatballs that I also grilled. No recipe for those, I kind of just threw them together. I added a nice amount of allspice, some cumin, coriander, and smoked paprika to the ground lamb as well as minced green onion, ramps, garlic and a few breadcrumbs for good measure.

Finally, I whipped up a delicious yogurt sauce that also had some of the garlic, ramps and green onion as well as olive oil and a lot of sumac. Fantastic!

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Greek Yogurt Pita Bread
Recipe from Molly Yeh via Joy the Baker
Ingredients

2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
1 teaspoon plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
3 3/4 cups bread flour, plus more for dusting
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for the bowl
3/4 cup warm water (105 to 110 degrees F)
3/4 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt

Directions
In a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment combine the flour, salt, sugar, yeast. Add the oil, water and yogurt and mix to combine. Stir the mixture with a spatula to lightly bring it together then knead with the dough hood on medium speed into a slightly sticky and soft ball. Add more flour or water as needed.

Remove the dough from the bowl. Add a splash of olive oil and return the dough to the greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest in a warm place until doubled in size - about 1 1/2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside. While the oven preheats, turn the dough out onto a clean work surface and divide into 12 equal balls. Roll the balls out into circles that are 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch thick. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 15 minutes. Place the pita on the prepared baking sheets an inch apart. Bake until they're puffy and lightly browned on top. Check their doneness after 5 minutes. They cook fast. Somewhere between 5 and 7 minutes should do the trick. Remove from the oven and clean kitchen towel, cover and let cool.

Sourdough Variation

Sourdough Greek Yogurt Pita Bread
Ingredients

140 grams bread flour
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons honey
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
3/8 cup (90 grams) Greek yogurt
170 grams discarded sourdough starter

Directions
In a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment combine the flour, salt and yeast. Add the honey, oil, water, yogurt and starter. Mix to combine. Follow the remainder of instructions as above.