Perfect Pita Pocket

As you know I am "Bread Baking Phobic" and seeing what others are capable of making does nothing to quell this feeling of inadequacy.

I am not a very brave person. I'm not one of those girls who jumps up in the middle of the night, cricket bat in hand to go and investigate. I usually crawl under the covers, aim a foot at Hubby's rib cage and in my best stage-whisper say, "Get out, there's someone outside".

There is one thing you can be sure of, if I have a real phobia, I'll take one occasion to face it head on and prove to myself that I can do anything. A fine example of this is my fear of unnatural heights. I can climb a mountain and feel no fear - but I am terrified of standing on a ladder or riding the big wheel at the show grounds.

There came a time when all the planets were correctly lined up and the family decided to go bungee-jumping and guess who went first - ME! I have the certificate proudly displayed in my office, just to remind myself that, although I won't climb a ladder without breaking into a sweat, I have conquered my greatest fear.

I have now faced my bread making demons and I can proudly tell you - I have come out a winner. This is one phobia I will never allow to cloud my kitchen again.

While trawling the net yesterday I came upon this recipe and decided I also wanted to be a Bread Baking Babe! I did not have all the ingredients, but knew I could "make do" and the result was absolutely terrific.

I made the following changes to the recipe and will guarantee that it works perfectly :

Perfect Pita Pockets

I subtituted the 3 cups whole-wheat pastry flour for 1.5 cups brown-bread flour and 1.5 cups normal cake flour.
I then used 3.5 cups normal cake flour for the rest of the recipe.

I followed all the directions in the method exactly and baked mine on 2 terracotta tiles, I usually use for pizza making.
They came out absolutely perfectly.
I did think it was going to be a mess, when I felt how soft and sticky the dough was.
I had to flour the board well to help roll them out, otherwise it sticks to everything.

There is only one problem now, those shop bought pitas I used to think were so great - are terrible compared to the home made ones, so now every time I want pitas, I am going to have to bake them! I guess you can't have everything in life.

I had mine filled with a grilled Chicken Fillet and lots of salad.