One of the things that make baking so interesting to me is the fact that the difference between being completely lost, with flour and dough covering everything in the kitchen, and between spectacular results, is often a simple trick or skill. One of these is the shaping of perfectly round rolls. When you really think about it, just how do you shape a peach sized round dough ball out of pieces of fridge dough? Pinching and tucking like you do with dough balls for pizza is not practical, because the dough pieces are too small for that. To show how simple it really is, I made this quick video:
Put the pieces you cut off onto a well floured surface. Keep a portion of your work surface clean though -- this is where you will shape the rolls. Lift a piece and flip it onto the clean surface, wet side down. Immediately place your hand on it and while pressing down gently, start circling your hand, making circles of about 6" to 8" in diameter. Do not pause after flipping the dough onto the surface, and never stop, but keep going! The secret is in the continuous motion that does not give the dough a chance to start sticking. If you do it right, it should take you about 5 seconds to shape a roll.
You can use this technique to make the dough balls for pita bread, or as I do in this case, to make breakfast rolls after getting up in the morning. It took me about 5 minutes to cut off the pieces from my bucket of fridge dough, shape them, and throw them in the oven. The rolls were baked at 450F for 25 minutes and made perfect breakfast rolls (and later, sandwich rolls).
Here is an amazing process caught on camera: the "puff" of a homemade pita bread in our oven. (Please excuse the dirty oven window -- our oven is a hard working one.)
Homemade pitas are delicious and quite unlike anything you can buy in stores. And like with many other baking techniques, people tend to make a big deal out of making pitas. If you google the topic, you will hear the craziest prescriptions for ensuring your pitas puff. But as I demonstrate here, you do not need much. It is certainly not necessary to have a heavy baking stone preheat for a long time. My trusty pizza screens are just right for the job. The important thing to remember is that pitas puff because once the outside bakes and solidifies a little, the steam gets trapped inside and has nowhere to go, so the bread balloons up. So a nice wet dough and a hot oven is really all you need.
Just preheat your oven to 500 F, pinch off plum- to peach sized pieces from your fridge dough, shape them into tight little balls, then roll them out to 1/4" - 1/8" thickness. They don't have to be perfectly round. Note: you will need to use plenty of flour to keep the dough from sticking to your rolling pin or the work surface. However, towards the end, try to hold the additional flour. You want to end up with a dough disc that does not have a lot of flour on it (which would burn in the oven). ** Because of the trickiness of the shaping, I recommend not trying pitas if you are a total beginner. First gain some practice with handling the dough by baking something that's a lot more forgiving (like pizza), and then try baking pitas.
Handling it gently, place the dough disc on a pizza screen and put it on the bottom rack of the oven. The pita should start to puff within a minute and be completely inflated in another minute. Leave it in the oven until you see the first light brown spots on the surface (another 1-2 minutes). Once this happens, remove the pita. Stack the pitas on top of each other. When cool, cut them in half with kitchen scissors or a knife and fill with delicious vegan things. ** Pitas are a spectacular thing to make when you entertain guests. You can set out a variety of things to put into pitas, and have everyone assemble their own.
Not all of your pitas will puff. Some won't, and some will only puff partially. This is okay. You can simply plan for making a few more pitas than you really will need, to account for failures. Personally I don't like to waste anything, so I just let others have the puffed pitas, and I will have the ones that didn't puff -- which are equally delicious of course. If a lot of your pitas don't puff, you probably are handling your dough not gently enough. Avoid "dimpling", poking, tearing etc. the dough.
If you get all your dough balls ready while the oven is preheating, you can get into a groove where you roll out the next pita while the previous one is baking. In this way you can make a lot of pitas in a short amount of time (20 or more per hour).
IMPORTANT: While there's always a risk of burning yourself when baking (my forearms and hands always sport a variety of burns), pitas are particularly dangerous and sneaky because they are filled with hot (as in 500 F hot) steam when you remove them from the oven. Do NOT flatten them with your hands, because the escaping steam will have scalded your skin before the pain registers. Even when you just hold them with your fingers without pressing down, the steam will start to escape through small holes in the dough, and if your fingers happen to be close to one, you will get burned. I'm serious and speaking from experience. My most painful baking injuries were from baking pitas and I learned the lessons quickly. It's best to not ever handle pitas with anything but tongs until they are flat and cooled off somewhat. If you stack them as I suggest above, they will flatten each other nicely and also keep each other warm.
I'm particularly thankful for everyone who prefers to let turkeys live and forgoes animal products at the table. Below some pictures of the all-vegan Thanksgiving dinner at the Ethical Pizza household. Enjoy the long weekend, and don't forget about Buy Nothing Day on Black Friday (and any day, really)!
Clockwise from the top left: mashed potatoes w/ gravy, Celebration Roast, homegrown greens, stuffing, cranberry sauce. We have also baked a sweet potato and a pecan pie each.
Freshly delivered 50 lbs. bag of all purpose flour by the renowned Honeyville Mills. Can't wait to put it to the test with pizza and bread. For today I have settled with whipping up a batch of fridge dough and baking some crackers with it:
They came out well, and were had as a snack with vegan blue cheese and cranberries. I will at some point get around to posting the cracker recipe or a video. They're super easy and quick to make and taste delicious.
