A Pile of Pitas/ Success at Last!

In addition to the obvious of missing my family and friends while being stubbornly independent in Phoenix, there are several restaurants back home that I miss as well. When I go back home I try to go to The Pasta House, Steak 'n Shake, Olga's Kitchen, and Casa Gallardo at least once. During some of my visits I have eaten at both Steak 'n' Shake and Olga's Kitchen twice in one day. I mean that one day I had Steak 'n' Shake for lunch and dinner and another day I did the same with Olga's. I didn't eat four meals.

I love Olga's pita bread. I found a recipe for it when I first moved to Arizona, but was a little too intimidated to try it. Now I figured, what the heck? My kitchen hasn't burned down yet and I haven't gotten food poisoning, so I'll give it a shot. I was also inspired to use another one of the yeast packets that I had from my Monti's bread attempt since you had to buy three packets all attached instead of just one. As a side note, yeast really creeps me out. In fact, as I'm writing this, I'm giving myself the chills. I don't know if it's the texture which reminds me of insects' homes, or the kind of weird smell, or the fact that it's somehow alive, but I just don't really like it. However, my love of baked goods is making me confront my yeast unease.

This recipe also called for another ingredient I'm not really too fond of... honey. This time I know the reason I'm not fond of it. People, it's bee vomit or spit or something that comes out of frickin' scary bugs. That is disgusting. There is also something wrong about anything that is edible for literally thousands of years. Unfortunately, even knowing that, I had just thrown about a half bear away a few days prior when I was cleaning out my pantry thinking, "Gross! I'm never gonna use honey for anything!". I also had some canned goods that had actually passed their expiration dates! It's kind of impressive to think that some of them probably made their way cross country from Illinois, through an apartment, and a house, and finally the place I live now before meeting their fate of a garbage dump. Really makes you think... But I digress. I had to go to the grocery store to get a few accoutrements anyway, so I reluctantly stuck honey on the list too.

About a million dollars later since I've now figured out the proper way to shop, I was ready to make my pitas. Unfortunately my kitchen was not. Remember that banana bread I baked last week? I hadn't gotten around to putting the dirty cookware in the dishwasher yet because that meant unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher and I'm sorry but during the past week, I had a lot of Top Model season 1 that I had Netflixed to watch, so therefore I was much too busy to be concerned with things like clean dishes. It was also getting kind of late, so I really didn't feel like washing the dishes by hand, so I forced myself to put the clean dishes away and load the dirty ones. Then I settled down to a nice bowl of Coco Puffs, resolving to make pitas the next day.

So the next day rolls around and shockingly, I actually made pitas! I had a tiny problem trying to scald the milk, but after that, it was relatively smooth sailing. I wasn't able to roll my pitas out to be as big as they were supposed to be and they kept kind of shrinking before I got them into the pan, but man were they delicious! The recipe made 16, but I ate half of one while I was waiting for another one to cook and then something bad happened to another one (I think when I was rolling it out, it kept sticking to itself until I got frustrated and threw it away) so I ended up with 14. I took one and sprinkled shredded cheese on top and put it in the microwave for 15 seconds. Then I took two spoonfuls of sour cream and mixed in some garlic powder. When the cheese pita came out, I put some sour cream in it, folded it in half, and hoped it would be almost as good as my beloved 3 cheese Olga. It tasted so good that I had to eat another one! I froze the other 12 and am planning on eating more for dinner tonight. I think they would also be awesome filled with Greek salad. I have a really good Greek salad dressing that is also similar to Olga's that I think I will try tonight.

I know after seeing all this, certain readers like Beth, Graham, and Nikki who are also no longer near an Olga's, will be dying for the recipe, so here it is. Like I said, don't let it intimidate you because the results are totally worth it! Also, the sour cream and garlic powder was a pretty good imitation of whatever the heck Olga's uses for their "Olgasauce". Now somebody needs to figure out how to make their Snacker's and cheese!

Olga Bread

1 cup milk
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup margarine
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 pkg.)
1/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon sugar
4 cups flour, divided
1 egg

Scald milk (heat milk on medium, stirring occasionally until it bubbles at the sides of the pan), remove to large bowl.
Add honey, margarine and salt to milk.
Stir until margarine is melted, set aside to cool until lukewarm.
Combine yeast, warm water and sugar.
Stir until sugar is dissolved, set aside.
Add 1 1/2 cups of the flour to lukewarm milk mixture and beat well.
Mix in egg and yeast mixture.
Add remaining flour, a little at a time, until sticky dough is formed.
Turn out on a floured surface*, knead about two minutes.
Dough will be sticky, (but don’t add more flour).
Place dough in oiled bowl.
Turning once to oil whole surface of dough.
Cover with plastic wrap and let stand in warm place until doubled in bulk.
Punch down dough; divide into 16 equal pieces.
Roll each piece to a thin rough circle about 8-1o inches in diameter.
Heat a large dry skillet over medium-high heat; do not use any oil.
Bake 15 seconds, flip and bake about 10 seconds on other side, until mottled brown spots appear.
Cool and store in a plastic bag.

*Oh yeah! I FINALLY found a use for my stupid wax paper!!! Even though I scrubbed the heck out of my kitchen counter, I was a little wary of putting the dough balls directly on it so I put down wax paper and covered it with flour. However, wax paper struck out again because it kept moving around whenever I tried to roll out the dough, so after about 3 attemps I got mad and threw it away, but I totally go to use it for three pitas! I'm sure I could have used parchment paper instead though...