hummus and pita

For me, the thing about cooking is that it never gets old. I try something new, and I'm honestly surprised that it works and that it tastes great. Then I realize that all this time I've been buying these items when I could have been making them myself. Each singular success is enough to keep me going, to keep looking through cookbooks for other projects or flavor combinations. So if you looked inside my fridge, you'd see that I now make many things from scratch instead of buying them already processed; pesto, tapenade, pie crust, mayonaisse, salad dressings, hummus, tortillas, ricotta cheese, lemonade, iced tea. Yes, it's more convenient to buy these things regularly, but it's much tastier and confidence boosting to realize that I am, and you are, able to do them yourself.

My latest project was pita bread, introduced to me as a home baking idea by a recent visit with Kate @ the Dinner Chronicles. Baking any kind of bread makes me nervous. Like I've said before, yeast is alive. It could overtake me or my children or my kitchen. I force myself to do it the way I'm told you're supposed to face your fears.

This recipe is wonderful because in the morning you can decide you're in the mood for pita and you can get it done by lunch. After making one batch for lunch, I put the rest of the balled dough into the fridge overnight. Last night I brought the dough up to room temperature and made the remainder with dinner.

Pita bread recipe at the Fresh Loaf


What's pita without hummus? I used recipe below at Saveur. Instead of boiling and soaking dried beans, I simply used two cans of chickpeas. It includes tahini - which you can omit if you don't have any in the pantry.

Hummus with Tahini at Saveur