Pita
Pita or pitta is a family of yeast-leavened round wheat flour flatbreads popular in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and nearby regions. It comprises pocketed versions, such as Arabic bread, Syrian bread, and other names, as well as pocketless versions, such as the Greek pita, which is used to wrap souvlaki. Pita is a term used in English to refer to a variety of flatbreads that have distinct names in their native languages, such as various forms of Arab khubz.
History
Pita has its origins in Middle Eastern prehistoric flatbreads. There is evidence that the Natufian people of what is now Jordan developed a type of flatbread from wild cereal grains around 14,500 years ago, during the Stone Age. Wheat and barley were among the first domesticated crops in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period, some 10,000 years ago. By 4,000 years ago, bread was a vital part of the diet in societies like Mesopotamia’s Babylonian culture, where the earliest-known written records and recipes for bread-making are found, and where pita-like flatbreads cooked in a tinûru were a staple of the diet, similar to today’s tandoor bread or taboon bread. However, the steam-puffed, two-layer “pocket pita” is not mentioned in ancient literature or in any medieval Arab recipes, and food historians such as Charles Perry and Gil Marks believe it was a later creation.