Series 6, Episode 5, Gluten-free pitta bread

I always thought it was “pita” bread, but apparently the British English is “pitta”. This is also how the BBC spells it here https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/gluten-free_pitta_bread_09625 I think either way is fine though.

This was alternative ingredient week on the bake off so the challenge here was that the pitta bread was gluten-free. I’ve never made gluten-full pitta bread before so it was all new to me anyway. I realised before I started that my yeast contained gluten, so it wasn’t entirely gluten-free, but I can’t imagine there was much in there to make a difference to the bake. I didn’t give this to anyone who couldn’t eat gluten though, so wasn’t making anyone ill.

The recipe uses psyllium powder as a gluten substitute. I managed to find a small pouch online, which was just enough for what I needed. I mixed the powder with water and this is what it looked like:

Not very appetising at all! I then had to mix this with the other ingredients and it just landed in the bowl like some sort of weird jelly:

Once mixed I didn’t know how long to knead it for. Usually I’d be doing that test where you see how much you can stretch it to make sure the gluten has done its job but this dough didn’t work like that. I just carried on until it looked smooth and left it to prove for 90 mins. Here it is after proving. He looks grumpy:

The dough was really easy to work with, I think because it wasn’t very stretchy. I had to bake them in batches and out of the 12 I made only one of them puffed up and made an air pocket. Here they are:

I’m not sure why only one puffed up. I didn’t quite add all of the water to the dough, but I think it was odd that one of them worked at all if the reason was not enough water. My other theory was that the baking tray hadn’t heated up enough originally but had done by the time I did my second batch. It still doesn’t explain why the others on the tray didn’t puff up though. It will forever main a mystery. It was easy enough to cut these open anyway and I put some chicken and salad in them. They didn’t keep well and were starting to go stale the next day, but were ok after being in the toaster for a few seconds. I probably won’t bother making these again, I don’t need gluten-free and the shop bought normal ones are good enough for me.

Lily

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