Hummus and pita

This weekend, thanks to a trip to the Boulevard Bread Company in Little Rock, I was freed from baking a regular loaf of bread. I decided to use my baking time to make hummus and pita, using my new food processor. For those of you, like my dad, who want to know about the pocket in pita: I have no idea how the commercial producers get the pocket in the pita. I have never had any pockets. It must be a different sort of process.

I have made pita in the past, using the bread machine to do the mixing and rising. This time, I decided to try a recipe from one of my bread books. After using it, I can say that it is a pretty book, but not the most practical when it comes to actually baking bread.

Everything was going fine, until I got to the actual baking part. For one thing, the recipe had me letting the pita rise on the counter. This is a bad idea, because 1) the dough tends to stick to the counter, and 2) I have to handle it to get it on to the baking sheets. This destroys any bubbles and rising that may have taken place. The other thing that the book had wrong was the baking temperature/time ratio. 450 for 15 minutes?! 13 minutes (at which point I got wise and pulled the plug, er pita) was too much. But, they weren't destroyed, and still taste really good, especially when covered with hummus and feta.

I got the food processor last week as an early birthday present. We have been cooking along fine without a full sized machine for 8 years, but lately I have run into a bunch of recipes that would be a whole lot easier with one. Such as hummus. The recipe I use is from a Lebanese woman my mother met, and is pretty good. The end quality will be determined by the quality of chickpeas and tahini, as well as your ability to easily blend everything together.

This blending just got a whole lot easier. No more trying to divide everything in half to fit the mini-processor. No more try to make an undersized engine chop up the chickpeas. Just add ingredients and go! Yum Yum