The Ships Cook Book

Recipes, Insight, Theory and Everyday Management for Students, Ships Cooks, and those with an interest in Marine Catering Operations. All Recipes have a fully adjustable servings feature, just change the number of servings and the ingredients recalculate automatically.

The Ships Cook Book

Pitta Bread


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 Pitta Bread
Pitta bread is an essentail part of a Donna Kebab and whilst it is a common practice for many cooks to buy them ready made, the bought ones lack the fresh softness and superior eating qualities of these freshly grilled Pitta Breads. These Pitta's make a good Donna Kebab even better.
Servings
Pitta's
Ingredients
Servings
Pitta's
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Note;- in this recipe here I am using a spiral action mixer, these are less common on ships tan a standard planetary action mixer unless you have a dedicated bakery, unlike a planetary mixer the hook or spiral turns in a fixed position and the machine bowl turns.
  2. Place the dry ingredients in machine mixing bowl fitted with a hook attachment and mix.
  3. Add the olive oil and mix until the oil is well rubbed in.
  4. Add the warm water and mix to a smooth dough.
  6. When the dough is smooth and slightly elastic remove from the machine and place on the bench.
  7. Scale the dough at approximately 100grams and mould into balls and switch on your brat pan, on a medium setting so it can heat up while your roll out your pitta's, you will know on your equipment the best setting to select for your brat pan. (You could also cook these pitta's in a thick bottomed frying pan or alternatively cook I n a very hot oven)
  8. Take each ball of dough and on a well floured bench and using a rolling pin roll out to a suitable size
  9. Lay the rolled out pittas on the bench ensuring they are well floured as they will stick to each other.
  10. I use a plate to carry 6 or 8 pittas as a time from the bench to the brat pan.
  11. Place your pittas directly onto the dry pan surface and cook for about 2 minutes
  12. The pitta's will rise and puff up slightly, turn one over to check there is a little colour and if the colour looks suitable turn them all over and cook for a another minute or two, the time will depend on the heat of your pan.
  13. As the pittas cook place on a tray with a cooling wire and cover the warn pitta's with a clean tea towel, this allows steam from the pittas to keep the Pittas pliable.
Recipe Notes

It is possible to bake these Pitta Breads in a hot oven at approximately 225⁰C for 2 to 3 minutes only on dry flour dusted trays with no oil or grease, Oven baking causes the Pitta's to puff up like balloons, it is import to set the oven timer for 2 to 3 minutes only, over baking will cause the Pitta's to become too brittle and difficult to slice. When I have used this technique soon as they come out of the oven I side the pitta's straight deep steamer tray which has been lined with a small clean table cloth I use just for this job alone, as I am able to fold the cloth over the warm pitta's to keep the warm and pliable.

When using a convection oven the loose flour on the trays and pitta's will be blow around the oven by a powerful fan.

These two oven above where ten years old at the time these photographs were taken but notice how clean they are, these ovens were used constantly often for 16 out of every 24 hours when the vessel was fully operational, but cleaned weekly in accordance with the manufactures instructions.

Flour blowing around the inside of these Rational Combination Ovens poses no problem as it is easily washed off in minutes using the built in hose.

 

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