Sourdough Pita Bread

Sourdough pita bread turns only 4 ingredients into light, fluffy pockets of bread, perfect for dipping in hummus or tzatziki sauce! With simple step-by-step instructions, you can easily make pita bread at home using your sourdough starter.

As much as I love baking sourdough bread, during the summer, I don’t always want to heat up our kitchen while baking it. That’s where recipes like this sourdough pita bread come in! Sourdough pita requires only a fraction of the time to bake, and it pairs so well with summery dishes like hummus, pesto, or cucumber salad.

All you need to make pita at home is some flour, salt, and sourdough starter, and I bet you already have those ingredients in your kitchen. Besides being easy to bake, there is something so mesmerizing about watching the pita dough inflate with air and puff up in the oven. With lightly golden edges and a hollow inside, this pita tastes fantastic served alongside your favorite Mediterranean meal. Although I won’t judge if you want to eat it plain right out of the oven 🙂

How to serve Sourdough Pita Bread

One of the things you’ll love about sourdough pita bread is that you can enjoy it for any meal! Here are a few ideas you might like:

• Breakfast pita: Scrambled eggs with roasted veggies and shredded cheese
• Veggie friendly: Hummus, sliced avocado, tomatoes, and spinach
• Afternoon snack: Tzatziki sauce and cucumbers
• Shwarma supper: Chicken shwarma with tzatziki sauce and roasted peppers

Let me know your favorite way to enjoy pita bread in the comments section below 🙂

Tips for making Sourdough Pita Bread

• If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can knead the dough with your hands. This will take about 5 minutes or so, until the dough forms a smooth, stretchy ball.
• If you don’t have a pizza stone, that’s totally fine! Instead, you can place a baking tray or large cast-iron skillet in the oven while it preheats.
• Make sure to roll out the pita dough as thin as possible. This will help it fill with air and puff up when you bake it.
• This pita bread definitely tastes best when you eat it fresh out of the oven. Store any leftovers in an air-tight container for 3-5 days.

Tools you will need

To make this pita bread you’ll need a stand mixer with a paddle attachment and dough hook, a rolling pin, parchment paper, and a pizza stone.

If you don’t have a stand mixer, that’s ok! You can knead the dough by hand instead. And if you don’t have a pizza stone, you can use a baking tray that doesn’t have a rim or a large cast-iron skillet.

Ingredients you will need

• 2 cups flour – All-purpose flour is best for this, but you can experiment with half all-purpose and half whole-wheat or einkorn if you like.
• 1/2 cup sourdough starter – Make sure it’s active and bubbly so your pita will rise!
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp salt – Kosher salt works well here

How to make Sourdough Pita Bread

The night before:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flour, sourdough starter, and salt using a paddle attachment.

Slowly add in the water a little at a time so that the dough forms a ball.

Switch to a dough hook and mix the dough for 5-8 minutes on medium speed. The dough should form a smooth ball and pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Cover the bowl with a towel and let the dough rise overnight.

Shaping the pita:

The next morning, the dough should nearly double in size. Turn the dough out onto a sheet of parchment paper.

Divide the dough into 10 pieces and roll each piece into a ball.

Use a rolling pin to roll each piece of dough out into a thin circle. You want the dough to be as thin as possible so that it will puff up nicely in the oven.

Once you have rolled out each piece of dough, stack them with a sheet of parchment paper between each piece so that they don’t stick together.

Keep the pita in the fridge until you are ready to bake them. I’d recommend baking them within 12 hours for best results.

Baking the pita:

Preheat your oven to 550 degrees Fahrenheit and use the convection setting if you have it. Place a pizza stone in the oven while it’s preheating.

Once the oven is preheated, place a sheet of parchment paper on the pizza stone and then place 3-4 slices of pita bread on top of it.

Bake the pita for 3 minutes, then flip the pita to the other side and bake for another 2 minutes. The pita should puff up in the oven as they expand with air and get a little brown around the edges.

Remove the pita from the oven carefully and wrap in a towel to keep warm.

Switch to a new sheet of parchment on the pizza stone (so the first sheet doesn’t burn!) and bake the rest of the pita bread the same way.

Looking for more sourdough recipes?

If you are, make sure to head over to the Kitchen Counter for more simple recipes. Here are a few you might enjoy:

• Overnight Sourdough Naan
• Sourdough Focaccia
• Sourdough Crackers
• Sourdough Overnight Bread
• Sourdough Baguettes

If you make this recipe and enjoy it, let me know in the comments section below! You can also tag me on instagram @oldfashionedinspiration with a picture of your creation