Pita bread
Pita, a slightly leavened bread, is perhaps the oldest bread we know of. Pita is a word derived from the Greek verb pessein, which means cooked or baked. Oriental pancakes are the Asian equivalent of pita. This flat bread is usually cut open forming a pocket which can be filled with your chosen ingredients. The versatility of pita landed it a place on supermarket shelves toward the end of the twentieth century in the United States.
Pita has been the basis for many of the foods we enjoy today, to include pizza, but is typically Pita is also popular as a flat sandwich bread which is often filled with salads such as tuna or chicken salad. The portability of pita has made it a popular addition to many fast food chains in the United States in the recent past. “Wraps” filled with chicken and vegetables and topped with some sort of dressing or condiment are on the menu of almost any fast food place you walk in to. Flatbreads are often offered as a healthy alternative to the usual deep fried foods.
Pita or Pizza
The basic translation of pita is “cooked in ashes.” Pita is a slightly leavened flatbread of wheat flour, that was originally cooked in brick ovens. Flatbreads date back to prehistoric times and are probably the earliest breads created. The production of flatbreads did not require utensils or even an oven. In early times, flatbreads served the purpose of a serving platter for the daily meal.
The size of pita varies depending on who is making it and what it will be used for. Pita replaced the word “plakous” of Greek origin that’s meaning had changed to be known as a thicker cake. The word pitta was used because pine pitch forms layers associated with breads and cakes.
Flatbreads were originally used as a serving dish for meats. This practice of topping flat bread with other foods for consumption could be where pizza got its start. The different dialects of Italy transformed the word “pita” to pizza. The act of topping a baked dough of grains and water and then topping it with a variety of ingredients has been around long before the pizza we now consume today.
pita bread
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