history of pita bread it's usage and formation.

2. Pita Bread
RANI SUMMEYA SEME 33

3. Pita Bread
• Family of yeast-leavened round flatbreads baked
from wheat flour
• Common in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and nearby
areas
• Includes the widely-known version such as
• Arabic bread khubz ʿarabī
• Syrian bread
• Greek pita

4. History
• Roots in the prehistoric flatbreads of the Middle East
• Evidence from about 14,500 years ago
• Jordan made a kind of flatbread from wild cereal grains
• By 4,000 years ago
• bread was of central importance in societies
• such as the Babylonian culture
• where the earliest-known written records and recipes of bread-making originate
where pita-like flatbreads cooked in a tandoor
• No record of the steam-puffed, two-layer "pocket pita"
• in the ancient texts
• in any of the medieval Arab cookbooks
• Food historians --- later development

5. Nutritional Value
white flour pita bread whole wheat flour pita bread
Riboflavin high amount Riboflavin low amount
Folate high amount Folate low amount
Vitamin B6 high amount Vitamin B6 low amount
Thiamin high amount Thiamin low amount
Niacin high amount Niacin low amount
Vitamin A absent Vitamin A present

6. Raw Materials
• Grain flour
• Bakers' yeast
• Water
• Salt

7. Grain flour
• Harvested grain is ground according to the type of
bread being made
• Grains are composed of three parts:
• Bran (the hard outer layer)
• Germ (the reproductive component)
• Endosperm (the soft inner core)
• Whole wheat flour is made from the grinding of all
three parts
• White flour is made solely from the endosperm
• Because the nutrient-rich bran and germ have been removed
in the processing
• Grain mills grind the flour and then sell it in bulk to
commercial bakeries

8. Bakers' yeast
• Yeast is a single-celled fungus with enzymes
• that extract oxygen from starches or sugars present in food
• This causes fermentation and leavening (rising)
• In commercial production,
• yeast strains are fed a solution of molasses, mineral salts and
ammonia
• After the fungus completes growth
• yeast is separated from the solution
• washed and packaged
• It is either combined with starch and compressed into cakes
• ground into powdered form and mixed with corn-meal

9. Water
• The water used must be of the purest quality
• not only because it will be used for human
consumption
• but also because the hardness and pH affect the
properties of the dough
• Most processors filter the water so that it is of
medium hardness (50-100 parts per million) with a
neutral pH

10. The Manufacturing Process
• Mixing the dough
Premeasured amounts of flour, salt, water, and yeast are blended in
commercial mixers in several hundred pound batches
• Extruding the dough
The dough is scooped out of the mixing bowl and fed into an extruder that
forms the dough into tennis-ball sized portions. Each ball is then dropped
into cups moving on a conveyor belt
• First proofing
The dough balls are allowed to rest and rise in the cups for 15 minutes. This
process is called proofing

11. Continue…
• Cutting and forming the pitas
The balls are turned out onto a sheeter that travels on a linear conveyer belt. The
sheeter passes under a series of rollers that press the dough into the desired
sized circles
• Second proofing
The circular loaves move into the top shelf of a rotating proofer. As they slowly
move down to the bottom of the proofer, the rises again. They exit the proofer
and are conveyed into the oven
• Baking the pitas
The ovens are kept at a very high temperature, between 800-900° F. The loaves
move quickly through the ovens where they are exposed to the high heat for
about one minute.

12. Continue…
• Cooling and flattening the loaves
The baked pita loaves moves out of the oven back and forth on a system of
conveyers belt for 20 minutes until they are cooled. Plant workers then
manually flatten the puffed-up loaves. Burnt or undercooked loaves are
discarded
• Slicing the loaves
If the pita loaves are to be sliced in half, they are conveyed to slicing machines
where rotating knife blades quickly slice the bread.
• Packaging
The pita are conveyed to the packaging area where they are stacked in a pre-
determined amount and inserted into pre-printed plastic bags. Workers may
close the bags manually with twist ties. Alternately, the bag openings may be
fitted with a zipper tear-strip. The packaged pitas are loaded onto trays or into
cartons for shipment.

15. Uses of Pita Bread
• Pizza
• Shawarma
• Hummus-Stuffed Pitas
• Mediterranean Tacos
• Chicken Pita Pockets