grilling flat bread

Well it is spring and the sun is out, so that means grilling season for a lot of folks.  So I will tell you my favorite thing to grill.  Now if you are a loyal follower you know I am not going to say steak.  And they may be good but I am not going for the burger.  My favorite thing to grill is flat bread or pita bread depending on where you are from.  Now these are really easy to grill and just look cool.  There are a few tricks to make this work out and two of them are simple to remember; 1) hot grill 2) lots of smoke.  So let’s work with the grill first.  Take some wood chips and start them to soaking, they need to soak for about an hour.  Maple, apple, and cherry are all good choices here.  Now, when we start cooking we are going to set one side of the grill to low and one to high.  Once the chips have soaked enough, make a small tinfoil pan for them and place them on the cold side under the cooking grate, as far away as possible.  Now let’s look at the scary, hard to make bread.  Now if you remember I posted a generic bread recipe that works for just about any bread.  And that is exactly what we are going to use for pita bread,

31/2 to 4 cups of flour

1 to 1 ½ cups or water

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

Mix your dry ingredients’ together then add the water.  Mix until it forms a dough ball.  At this point you adjust your water and flour.  If it is a bit too wet, add flour; a bit to dry, add water. Knead dough until soft and elastic.  Let it rise until it is doubled in size.  Time will depend on how warm your house is and how warm the water was.  Now you have dough we are back to the fun stuff.

Make the dough into 8 or 10 round balls a little smaller than a softball.  Roll them flat and that that is it.  Now let’s go to the grill.  Now open your grill, smoke bellows out, breath.  I do cheat a bit and I have been known to take my pizza stone out and put it on the grill.  If you do not have one it is ok it will still work.  Take a wad of paper towels soaked in oil and scrub your grill a bit.  Throw one of your flat breads on the grill.  They usually cook 4 to 5 minutes but it depends on the temperature of the grill.  Close the lid.  When the bread puffs up and get slight grill marks on the bottom it is done.  Take it off with tongs and toss on another.  Now that you can make pita bread, I will look for some Greek recipes.