Sourdough Pita Pockets for Lunchboxes

I make two wholemeal pita pockets fresh every morning. My partner bikes them the two kilometres to our grandkids’ place and their mum fills them for the lunch boxes. Kids are such creatures of habit – they are very boring with their favourite fillings, the same thing every day. One likes cheese and a salsa with a bit of chili heat, the other a Vietnamese style salad with sprouts, and there is no variation allowed.

It sounds like it entitles me to grandma of the year award, but in fact it’s one of those things that, if you happen to have all the ducks available to line up, it’s so ridiculously fast and easy. It’s one of the favourite things of my day. It’s like giving a fresh, warm, soft, wholemeal morning hug. And as a nice little side benefit, it eliminates the problem of getting rid of plastic bread bags.

It’s not going to work for everyone – there’s a few ducks have to line up. This is my version, and maybe it will give you ideas. (There’s a video at the bottom if you like pictures.)

I’m an early morning person. I can make sourdough pita pockets in less than 15 minutes if I have to, but a leasurely process takes almost no work but about an hour and a half of time. At around 6 am, I put the kettle on for my tea and at the same time take the sourdough starter out of the fridge and pour about a cupful of it into a bowl. I can do it by eye now, but in the beginning I used a soup ladle. I stir in a good pinch of salt and enough plain wholemeal flour to make a shaggy dough. No need to knead, just stir it all together with a spatula. Then I drink my tea, go watch the dawn, water the pots on the front deck for half an hour.

The wait time isn’t strictly necessary if you have fed sourdough starter, and I make pita every weekday morning so my starter is well fed. But giving the sourdough creatures time to make a start on digesting it does make the dough easier to roll out in the next stage.

At around 6.30, I put the kettle on for my second cuppa, put a handful of flour on the kitchen bench, tip the bowl out into it and divide it into two small apple sized balls. While the tea is brewing I roll out the balls into two flat circles about a centimetre thick. Then I leave them sit for another half an hour or so. Again, I can skip the wait if I have to, but it makes the “pop” in the next stage more reliable.

I have one of those benchtop convection ovens, and one of the things I like about it is that it heats up in no time. There is only one real non-negotiable trick to pita pockets – a very hot oven. I’ve made pita on the stovetop, in a very hot cast iron frypan with a lid, but it’s better for naan or flatbread than pita – they aren’t as soft and don’t balloon out so reliably. My oven will heat up to 250°C in less than five minutes. I heat a mini pizza tray with holes in it in the oven and cook the pitas on it, one at a time. They take (literally) about two minutes minutes each.

I take them out as soon as they balloon, or pop. You can watch through the oven glass as a bubble forms and slowly spreads until the pita pops out and makes the hollow pocket so perfect for filling. I find that I need to stand there drinking my tea watching them, because if I get distracted even just for a few minutes, I overcook them and they get crisp, which is still good but the kids like them soft, halved and the pocket filled with their favourite fillings. To keep them soft, I take them out straight away and wrap them in a clean teatowel where they steam a little.

By half past seven the pitas are ready to be biked over. It’s a weekday morning ritual I treasure.