Rebel With A Pita

I was flipping through my Bread Bible a few days ago and found a recipe for pita bread.  The recipe even promised that my pitas would come with a convenient pocket!  I decided I needed to try this out and see if I could successfully make not just a pita, but a pita with a pocket.  I was excited, and a bit scared.

The final products.

I was a bit confused at first about how much rise time was needed to make these pita-pockets.  I found several options listed, ranging from 1 hour to 3 FREAKING DAYS!!!  Every time I found the words "letting the dough rise" there was a different set of numbers.  So me, being the patient person I am, decided that after 4 hours of letting the dough rise in the fridge I couldn't take it any more!  I was not going to wait 3 days to have my perfect pitas.  The idea of those yummy pita pockets consumed be and I succumbed to my impatience and plowed on ahead with the recipe.

The pita rounds before I roll them out flat as a pancake.

If that doesn't sound impatient enough, I even said, "Screw it!" when the recipe told me to preheat my oven for at least an hour before baking.  I fortunately read ALL of the directions (not something I can say for most of my students, unfortunately...) and found an alternative method of cooking up the pitas that was much quicker:  cooking them in a frying pan on the stove.

Again, the directions were a bit confusing when it came to cooking these babies up.  I was instructed to oil the pan, place the pita round in the pan for 20 seconds (What can I say?  It's very precise.), then flip the pita and let it cook for a minute.  Then I was to flip the pita again, letting it puff up.  The "puffing" process should take about a minute.  But the confusing part was when the directions stated this whole process should take close to THREE minutes.  Um, no.  According to my calculations, it takes closer to TWO minutes.  What was I supposed to do with those extra 40 seconds???  I decided to let them brown a little bit, even though the directions told me not to.  I'm such a rebel.

The last 40 seconds...

All in all, the pitas turned out great!  They really did have a pocket (it's so cute!), and I'm really looking forward to all the tuna sandwiches I'm going to be making this week!  To go along with my rebellious/impatient mood, I whipped together some hummus with my last can of garbanzo beans (I like the name garbanzo beans better than chickpeas.  They aren't peas anyway.  They're beans!) because I didn't feel like throwing on some sandals and driving the whole whopping 5 minutes to the store to buy some.

I know.  I'm really living on the edge.