Skillet Pita, Made in Camp
One dough, no oven, cooked flat on a pan over the stove. Bread that isn't crushed at the bottom of a food bag.
- calories
- 260
- weight
- 2.6 oz
- cal / oz
- 100
- protein
- 7 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 40 min
- water
- 300 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Lunch
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 3 cups | plus a little for the rolling surface |
|---|---|---|
| Instant yeast | 2 1/4 tsp | one packet; instant, not active dry, so it goes straight in dry |
| Sugar | 2 tsp | replaces the honey, which leaks |
| Salt | 1 1/2 tsp | |
| Ghee or shortening | 2 tbsp | stands in for butter, no cooler needed |
| Water | 300 ml | lukewarm if you can manage it, cold works with a longer rise |
Method
- Dump the dry mix into a pot or a gallon freezer bag and add the ghee and water. Work it with a spoon, then your hands, for about eight minutes. You want tacky, not sticky. Add flour a pinch at a time if it clings to everything.
- Cover the pot with a lid or seal the bag with air in it. Let it rise somewhere warm until roughly doubled: an hour in summer, two or three in the cold. Inside a jacket in your pack works.
- Punch it down, divide into eight lumps, roll each into a ball. Let them sit ten minutes under a bandana so they stop fighting you.
- Flour a cutting board or the smooth side of a stuff sack and press each ball flat, then roll or push it out to about 8 inches and an eighth of an inch thick. Thin and even matters more than round.
- Get a dry skillet or the bottom of a large pot properly hot over the stove. No oil.
- Lay one round in. Thirty seconds until it blisters, flip, then a minute or so while it puffs. Flip once more for another thirty seconds. If it does not balloon it is still bread.
- Stack the finished ones under a towel or in a pot cozy so they steam soft instead of drying into crackers.
Bread is heavy to carry and it arrives at camp destroyed. Making it there costs a rise you spend doing something else and about three minutes of cooking per round. The dry mix weighs less than the loaves it becomes, and nothing in it can spoil.
Two changes from a home version. The oven is gone, so a dry hot pan does the work; the puff comes from water flashing to steam inside a thin round, and a skillet delivers that fine as long as it is genuinely hot before the dough lands. Butter and honey are swapped for ghee and sugar, which sit in a pack at any temperature. Instant yeast means no proofing step and no separate cup of warm water to fuss with.
Packing
Combine flour, yeast, sugar, and salt at home in one bag and label the water amount on it. Ghee travels in a small screw-top jar and holds for weeks unrefrigerated. A rolling pin is optional; a smooth water bottle does the same job.
Variations
- Half whole wheat flour makes a denser, nuttier round. Add another splash of water.
- Brush the hot pitas with ghee and dust with dried garlic and za'atar to eat them on their own.
- Roll them thinner and cook longer over lower heat for a cracker that keeps three days.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/yummy-recipe-homemade-pita-bread