Using Pita Bread for Pizza Crust

Forgive me readers, it's been 3 months since the last time I made pita bread.  I've been struggling with the issues of Simple & Fast recipes vs. Simple & Slow.  Not every good meal can be made in 1 hour or less.  Some things takes time.  Some foods are just WAY better made from scratch and they just happen to take a while to become awesome.  This is my reasoning behind making homemade pita bread and flour tortillas.

So I got out my recipe for Homemade Pita Bread.
Makes 8 pitas

• 3 cups flour (1/2 whole wheat, 1/2 all purpose)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoon honey
• 1 packet yeast (or, if from bulk, 2 teaspoons yeast)
• 1 1/4  to 1 1/2 cups warm water, 90F to 100F degrees
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Mix the yeast in with the flour, salt, and sugar. Add the olive oil and 1 1/4 cup water and stir together with a wooden spoon. All of the ingredients should form a ball. If some of the flour will not stick to the ball, add more water (I had to add an extra 1/4 cup).

Once all of the ingredients form a ball, knead using an electric mixer, mix it at low speed for 10 minutes.

Place dough in a bowl that has been lightly coated with oil.  Form a ball out of the dough and place it into the bowl, rolling the ball of dough around in the bowl so that it has a light coat of oil on all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel & let rise until it has doubled in size, approximately 90 minutes.

Punch the dough down to release some of the trapped gases and divide it into 8 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, cover the balls with a damp kitchen towel, and let them rest for 20 minutes. This step allows the dough to relax so that it'll be easier to shape.

While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 450F degrees. If you have a baking stone, put it in the oven to preheat as well. If you do not have a baking stone, turn a cookie sheet upside down and place it on the middle rack of the oven while you are preheating the oven. This will be the surface on which you bake your pitas.

Spread a light coating of flour on a work surface and place one of the balls of dough there. Sprinkle a little bit of flour on top of the dough and use a rolling pin or your hands to stretch and flatten the dough. You should be able to roll it out to between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. If the dough does not stretch sufficiently you can cover it with the damp towel and let it rest 5 to 10 minutes before trying again.

Open the oven and place as many pitas as you can fit on the hot baking surface. They should be baked through and puffy after 3 minutes. If you want your pitas to be crispy and brown you can bake them for an additional 3 to 5 minutes, but it isn't necessary (in the batch pictured here I removed them at 3 minutes).

TAKE COMFORT MY FRIEND, not all the pitas will puff up this beautifully.  In fact, this ONE out of 8 pitas puffed out like this.  ALL the others just bubbled, however, they ALL TASTED GREAT!

And you know what else my friend, it doesn't even matter that they puff up.
'Cuz, we're turnin'em into pizza crust!

With the oven & pizza stone still hot, cut up grilled chicken, red bell peppers and onions.

Shred up your favorite cheese.  It doesn't have to be Mozzarella.  Romano, feta, goat, cheddar, Gouda, Monterrey jack, and jalapeno Havarti will work .

Spritz a little olive oil on the pita.  Layer on the chicken, veggies and cheese.  There's no need to go heavy on the goods.  The lighter the better.  Season with freshly ground pepper.

Slide the pizzas back onto the stone and BAKE for 3 to 6 minutes.  Watch the edges.
You're ready to eat.

On the second night we ate pizza, I topped it with chicken marinated in limes, homemade salsa, grilled onions, black beans and Tyler Florences' Pink Chili Mayonnaise drizzled on top.

I'll tell ya about how I marinated the chicken for each of these pizzas in the next post.
This is enough for one post, don't you think?

Oh, ok, one more recipe.

Tyler's Pink Chile Mayonnaise

• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 chipotle in adobo, plus 1 tablespoons of adobo sauce
• 1/4 lemon, juiced
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Blend all the ingredient with a small food processor.  Move to serving bowl.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.