Is pitta bread being replaced by wraps?

Pitta on the left, wraps on the right. Pitta, sometimes spelt pita and/or called pide. Wraps sometimes called mountain bread or lavosh. Pitta bread is a leavened bread (with yeast), wraps are unleavened. Well I think that's correct. There are, of course, thousands of different versions of these two types of flatbreads, but I'm really talking about the ones you get in supermarkets here. Well that's the starting point.

You see I don't know if I have noticed a trend that nobody else has or not. It would be most surprising if I was ahead of the pack as it were. I mostly find I am years behind trend.

It began with preparing for last Sunday's lunch. It was Middle-Eastern themed and I thought I would use Turkish bread just for a change, but then I thought I should at least check out the pitta bread and wraps too, to see if they might be better suited for the purpose of serving with herbs and cheese (my basket of herbs starter). I was in Coles which has a large section of shelving devoted to Middle-Eastern flatbreads. (If you want naan or tortillas they are elsewhere in the supermarket.) To my surprise there was hardly any pitta bread to choose from - I think there might have been just two different varieties - and they looked a bit chewy. But there were a huge number of wraps of various different types ranging in size, flavour, grain used to make them, and doubtless in healthiness. And just two types of pitta bread. I told myself that perhaps there was a shortage of some kind, but then again, there were no empty shelves, no space that was not filled. And when I went to Woolworths a few days later, I checked their shelves too and found a similar situation. Yes there were a few more varieties but not many and the bulk of the space allotted was taken up by wraps.

So I thought I would research on the net but couldn't find anything, other than a vast amount of stuff about how healthy wraps were and how to choose the right ones (basically the ones with the least ingredients). So obviously wraps are the thing. And I can sort of see why. They are an easy way to do lunch after all. You can put just about anything in them, roll them up and hey presto an attractive, and healthy looking lunch.

The supermarket magazines push them as healthy options for your kids, and as convenient wrappings for all your barbecue and otherwise not so healthy stuff that you might cook for yourself. Not that I am saying they are unhealthy - well the articles I found did suggest that lots of them are - lots of salt, sugar and chemical additives - spinach powder, not spinach for example. But, as I said, if you stick to the ones with few ingredients, then, yes, they are healthy and they are convenient. And delicious.

But why we seem to be discarding pitta bread is curious. I mean pitta is most often used as a kind of spoon for dips - and dips are certainly still thriving. The dips sections of every supermarket seem to be getting ever bigger. But I have to say that the bought supermarket ones never quite measure up to the ones you get served in Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants. And I have spoken about this before. So perhaps the whole world is making their own. (I doubt it.) Or perhaps they are using Turkish bread, or baguettes instead. They are supposed to be easy, and so much better than what you buy.

"The real thing is soft and chewy, rather than tough, with a fluffy interior perfect for soaking up sauces – they’re well worth the pretty minimal effort." Felicity Cloake

My daughter-in-law does make her own, and they are really great, but having now researched how best to do it I think she could improve on even these little masterpieces. For the trick seems to be to cook them in an extremely hot oven (the hottest it will go), very briefly and preferably on a stone. My daughter-in-law cooks them over gas. Felicity Cloake tells you how to cook them in the oven.

"Pitta breads get their characteristic form from a combination of heat and moisture. When the thin round of dough goes into the oven, the heat sets the top and bottom while turning the liquid in the dough into steam, which is then trapped between these layers of cooked dough, causing the bread to expand. Although it will rapidly collapse when removed from the heat, the pocket inside remains intact." Felicity Cloake

So your dough has to be a little bit moist too or there will be no steam to expand. Mind you her finished version doesn't look all that tempting. Not nearly as tempting as Nigel Slater/Paul Hollywood's: (Slater's recipe is based on one from one of Paul Hollywood's books.) This too is baked in the oven.

or the one from my Falafel for Breakfast cookbook. although these look almost too puffed. Brilliant for a pizza base though.

"Pita is the quintessential bread of Middle Eastern cuisine. It's a soft, lightly leavened bread that's similar to naan and flatbread. Pita, however, is baked at a higher temperature which causes the dough round to puff up and leave the well known pocket." the Spruce Eats

As I said, however simple they are to make - and I bet it's not really as simple as it sounds - I can't see your average supermarket mum doing it. She would be buying them ready made. I can sort of understand why there would be more wraps than pitta breads - the wraps are perhaps more useful to a supermarket mum. But I do remember the day when there were almost as many different varieties of pitta bread, as there are now of wraps. So what is your supermarket mum using instead of the pitta bread she used to use?

Interesting. In the end I chose to go with the Turkish bread which meant that rather than wrapping the herbs and cheese, or stuffing them in a pitta bread, we spread the cheese on the Turkish bread and placed a selection of herbs and crunchy things like radish and cucumber on top. It worked really, really well.

POSTSCRIPT

In Aldi today I watched as a man took something like half a dozen different packets of wraps off the shelf and into his basket. It was a significant number although not sufficient for him to be doing it for a restaurant or something. He didn't take any normal bread either. Now Aldi does not have a very large selection of wraps and other things. But significantly their pitta bread was tucked away on a high shelf, almost out of sight and there was just one variety. The wraps, the pizza bases and the Turkish bread were all much more prominently displayed lower down.