Why You Should Make Pita Bread

If your only experiences of pita have been the dry, flavorless rounds from the supermarket, you might wonder how this ancient bread—which dates back thousands of years—has persisted. But I can think of several reasons. The first being that good, fresh pita is a revelation: soft, tender, and pleasantly elastic, with flavor that’s both faintly sweet and reminiscent of the hearth on which it was baked. It’s got broad functionality, too: Tear it apart and use it as a vehicle for swiping up dips; wrap it around sandwich fillings; or take advantage of its built-in pocket and stuff it with falafel (see our recipe on page 13). And compared to the precision and skill required for other breads, making pita is a low-tech, casual endeavor—basically, you flatten a swath of dough into a thin disk, toss it onto a ripping-hot stone, and watch it puff.

Despite these compelling reasons to make pita at home, the bread’s one drawback is that its soft, tender chew is extremely ephemeral. Within hours of being baked, the rounds turn dull and dry—hence the lackluster options