Kitchening: Pita bread, a skillet cookie, and a tart

I've been cooking up a storm and I often take pictures that you just never happen to see so I thought I'd give you a rundown of a few delicious dishes with mostly links because that's easier than pretending that I "adapted" them.

Pita Bread

Here you see my very oddly shaped pitas risen.

Once the pita come out of the super hot oven, they get the sauna treatment in a (old) paper bag (obviously I reuse this bag).

I got this highly rated recipe from Allrecipes.com. Obviously mine aren't super round...I don't really try that hard because I usually make them to dip in my hummus, not fill up with falafel. 

I mix these on the dough setting in my bread machine and usually have to add at least a cup of flour or it's too gooey. Might be Chinese flour and Shanghai humidity.

The trick to getting the pocket to form is rolling them out a little thinner than you'd think. And not to worry if your oven doesn't go all the way up to 500 degrees. I set mine on the highest setting and it works out fine.

1 1/8 cups warm water (110 degrees F /45 degrees C) 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Directions:

1.	Place all ingredients in bread pan of your bread machine, select Dough setting and start. When dough has risen long enough, machine will beep.
2.	Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Gently roll and stretch dough into a 12 inch rope. With a sharp knife, divide dough into 8 pieces. Roll each into a smooth ball. With a rolling pin, roll each ball into a 6 to 7 inch circle. Set aside on a lightly floured countertop. cover with a towel. Let pitas rise about 30 minutes until slightly puffy.
3.	Preheat oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C). Place 2 or 3 pitas on a wire cake rack. Place cake rack directly on oven rack. Bake pitas 4 to 5 minutes until puffed and tops begin to brown. Remove from oven and immediately place pitas in a sealed brown paper bag or cover them with a damp kitchen towel until soft. Once pitas a softened, either cut in half or split top edge for half or whole pitas. They can be stored in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for several days or in the freezer for 1 or 2 months.

Whole Wheat Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie

Great for a crowd...just watch out how long you cook them. They can get a little dry or be undercooked in the center. I like these with half whole, half flour.

Citrus (mostly Lemon) Tart with Ginger Oat Crust

(for Pi Day, of course) 

I mixed two recipes and came up with one pretty delish tart--my first tart ever actually.


The Ginger Oat Crust came from a diabetics website so I switched all the substitutions (margarine, fake sugar) back into the real deal and added some extra ground ginger for good measure. I also use ginger nut cookies because that's what I had. Those have a little extra bite to them as well.


Citrus tart a la Martha. It didn't all fit in my little precooked ginger oat crust and made a bit of a mess getting it to the oven. Also cooked for nearly 50% longer than the directions said, but it tasted good in the end. The filling was essentially an uncurded lemon curd. I think I'll go with a lemon curd next time. I actually used the left over filling on the stove and turned it into curd which I sandwiched between my first ever macaroons (pictures to come).