Fill it, dip it or eat it plain, pita is a tasty, healthy and filling food.
By Janet Mendelsohn Moshe
If bread is the staff of life, then the Middle East leans heavily on pita. Baked as a flat round individual portion, if the pita is cut in half, a pocket forms. This 'pita pocket' is useful for filling; almost anything can be stuffed into a pita sandwich. The most common stuffings are falafel (fried chickpea balls) and/or humous and salad. The Greeks prefer their gyro sandwich, pita usually filled with lamb roasted on a skewer. In Israel this delicacy is known as shawarma, with the lamb often replaced by turkey.
Regardless of how you fill it, pita is the bread of choice in the region. The exact origin of pita is unknown but Armenia, Greece, Egypt, Israel and Syria are all in the running. Pita has been enjoyed in all of these countries for many centuries.
The Angel Bakery located in Jerusalem turns out 10,000 pitas daily, requiring a mere three hours of work on the computerized line. Angel's production manager Aharon Cohen, says that as Israel's largest bakery, they bake pita as a service to the bakery's customers. "We want to give our customers a large variety of breads, but of course pita is on our list," he says. As pita is baked without preservatives, they should be eaten immediately or frozen until needed. If the demand existed, comments Cohen, Angel could even double its production.
Despite the existence of Angel and other large bakeries, small family bakeries are gaining popularity. In the one-room bakery of the Haba brothers, a large stone oven (today heated by gas instead of wood) is constantly fed round pieces of dough which turn into freshly baked pita in two or three minutes. In Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda fruit and vegetable market, Rafi has been baking Iraqi style pita for almost forty years. "My family came to Israel from Iraq when I was 12 years old," he explains. "I didn't have the patience to sit in a classroom where I couldn't understand a word, so I came to work in the market." Today he has mastered Hebrew as well as the art of baking pita. Holding up a large crisp pita almost the diameter of a family-size pizza, Rafi says: "This is the way we baked pita in Iraq, and they are very popular in Israel today." For a special treat, Rafi adds sesame seeds or za'atar, (the hyssop and oregano spice that is native to Israel) to the dough of the pita before it is baked. .
According to Jerusalem nutritionist Miriam Fine, pita is a healthy component of our diet. "Pita bread, baked with only flour, water, yeast and a bit of salt is certainly a staple food," she says. While rice is the staple of Asia, the rest of the world prefers bread, and in the Middle East, pita often replaces bread. Of course as a nutritionist, Fine prefers her pita made from wholewheat flour rather than white. Wholewheat pita is less popular and therefore much more expensive, but Fine loves its dense almost nutty taste.
Fine's favorite filling is bean sprouts, a low fat cheese or techina (sesame paste) tomatoes and a cucumber slice, but the sky is the limit. Whether you stuff it, dip it in a paste of humous or even bake it into thin chips or croutons, pita is a popular item. And in a nod to modern culinary advances, with the addition of a fresh tomato sauce and cheese and perhaps olives or corn, a pita pizza can be popped in the toaster oven and enjoyed within minutes.