Whole Wheat Pitas with Flax

You know how you step away from the blog for just a second with every intention of coming right back and then you turn around and it's been two months? Yep, that's what's happened here. The really sad thing is that even though I haven't blogged here I think about blogging here once or twice a week. The ideas are flowing, I just don't have time/energy.

Here's a recipe I've been playing around with lately. It was inspired by some truly unpleasant pitas I picked up at the store not long ago. I thought, "Why am I buying these less-than-pleasing pitas when I can just make my own?" So, I am.

This recipe has two tracks. For purposes of time in my own life, I've started using my bread machine to do the mixing, kneading, and rising. I really like the results and it's made homemade fresh bread so much easier.  However, I'm including instructions to make them without a machine as well.

Whole Wheat Pita with Flax

1 cup +1 tablespoon warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons raw sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup stone ground whole wheat
1/2 cup milled flax
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

Fruit Pockets

A few weeks ago, I started wondering about whole wheat pie crust. I eat very little “white” bread.  I never make white bread.  I began to wonder why I’m satisfied with white flour pie for my pie crust. This quickly led to Google and a recipe search. It wasn’t long after that initial search that I made a quiche with sharp cheddar and left over ham accompanied by a whole wheat crust. I was hooked.

When you read about whole wheat and grains, you’ll consistently run into the word “nutty”. Not as in, “Those whole wheat people are absolutely nutty” but more as, “I really enjoyed the nutty flavor of the stone ground wheat, milled flax, insert grain of choice here, etc.” As the crust is one of my favorite parts of the quiche I was thrilled by the additional texture and added flavors of the whole wheat crust and yes, it did add a nice “nutty” flavor.

Here, I have to say, and not to come across as unduly prideful, but I do make a mighty mean pie crust, a melt in your mouth, lighter than air pie crust. What I found with my whole wheat crust was that white flour crust is a piece of cake but wheat flour takes some patience. It’s not that mixing it up is any more difficult, it's that the pastry dough tends to break more easily.   Where I can easily transfer a white flour crust to a pie plate, whole wheat crust doesn’t like to move about as much. After reading a few tips, I settled on rolling out the pie crust on wax paper (I would have rather used parchment paper but was out) and this made both the rolling and transfer much easier. Also, with a whole wheat crust, it may be necessary to do some “patching” in the pie plate. All of this is a bit more troublesome but, I’ve found the taste and texture of the whole wheat is worth the effort.

About this time, if you read the title of the entry you’re beginning to wonder what in the world quiche and pie crust have to do with fruit pockets. Perhaps, I’ve reeled you in under false pretenses.

Oh no my friends, here’s the thing... when you make a pie crust recipe that’s large enough to make either two single crusts or one double crust and you only need one single crust for the quiche, you have one crust left over. Often, I will stick the left over crust in the freezer for later but on that day I had peaches to use and thought how really nice mini-peach pies would be and, wouldn’t they taste nice with a whole wheat crust. I couldn’t find a recipe that did exactly what I wanted to do so I just went by instinct and thought I’d share the finished the product.