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Living in Michigan, freshly made pita bread and garlic sauce is usually as close as a quarter mile away wherever you are at any given time. We have a large population of residents of Middle Eastern descent and there’s a good number of restaurants that serve delectable Middle Eastern cuisine. My favorite, garlic sauce and pita bread. It’s a beautiful thing. 

I love, love, love pita bread and garlic sauce!  It occurred to me the hard way to not love it so much at lunch time when you have to return to the office and/or lead a meeting. But occasionally, I’ll throw caution to the wind – and it’s always worth it. If you’ve never had it, garlic sauce as you might guess, can be quite pungent and the aroma has a tendency to want to hang around.  I mean it is garlic, after all.

If you love it as much as I do, it’s hard to resist slathering warm pita with a shmear of thick, creamy, garlic sauce. If you’re not careful, it is very easy to down one after another and another and get too full to have an entree’.

It’s Tricky

And, if you love it like that, finding the best recipe to make it when you want it is the next logical step. I learned that while it only uses four simple ingredients, making garlic sauce can be a little tricky to master.  I’ve made it a few times. The first time, it was an unmitigated, oily mess.  It didn’t occur to me that I could have just held on to that epic failure to add it in other dishes to great success.  Instead, I trashed that disappointment without a second thought.

I had a little more success the second time around but, not by much. But I learned since my second attempt though, that adding a little cooked, mashed potato into the sauce to thicken it up some can offer up a bit of redemption.  Makes sense I guess, but that bit of intel was about a year and a half too late. Also, while the taste of boiled potato is pretty neutral, it still seems to me that it would alter the flavor of the sauce.

Sometimes It Takes a Little Practice (For Me)

The third time was the charm, I nailed it!  No yogurt or boiled potatoes necessary.  All I needed to do was slow down. Who knew?  Well, apparently everyone that successfully makes garlic sauce knew. If the emulsion doesn’t come together or breaks, you’re not going to have a successful sauce.  Garlic sauce will not be rushed.

I would also recommend that if you dream of the creamy, snow white garlic sauce that’s served in restaurants, don’t use grapeseed oil.  I did that so you don’t have to. Grapeseed oil has a green tint. While that’s ok and the sauce turned out fine; it was still delicious, I was forced by the perfectionist in me to make it again just to get the lily white result I expected. This time I used canola oil. Grapeseed oil will still yield a tasty sauce but, it was the aesthetics that drove me nuts.

Most of the recipes you’ll find on the internet have the four basic ingredients that make an outstanding sauce: salt, oil, lemon and garlic.  Fresh garlic. But it was the one ingredient that was never listed on any recipe that eluded me, and it was patience.  Hardly anyone tells you about that fifth ingredient but, Yumna at Feel Good Foodie does and this is where we found this delicious toum recipe.

Take it Slow

Rushing through the process could result in a disastrous, soupy sauce. Then you’ll have to try to remediate it with boiled potatoes or yogurt.  Nobody wants that. Adding the oil very s-l-o-w-l-y and alternating with the lemon juice is the key. The lemon juice helps to combine and emulsify the sauce and prevents the oil from overpowering the garlic. 

Greek yogurt is helpful to thicken it up a bit if needed and will tamp down the sharp taste of garlic if it’s too strong for your taste. You can also soak your garlic cloves in cold water for about 45 minutes to help cut the sharpness.  The flavor of the garlic sauce will also mellow out after a day or so in the refrigerator.

Pita bread

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It’s hard to resist warm pita bread straight from the oven.  Just like garlic sauce, pita has very few ingredients but, it is sooo freakin’ good! Watching it puff up in the oven creating pockets perfect for hummus, garlic sauce, shawarma or tabouli is like magic. 

I find that of all the bread recipes I’ve made over the years, this is one of the easiest. Usually the recipes I make call for active dry yeast. This recipe calls for instant yeast but you can use active dry yeast if that’s what you have on hand. You  will have to proof it before adding it to the recipe.  The upside is there is no kneading this dough. And, you don’t need a mixer.

This is Not Your Run of the Mill Grocery Store Pita

Another upside is that you probably already have all the ingredients on hand and it’s so easy that making a few pita loaves is pretty much a slam dunk. 

If you have a pizza stone or steel, that’s great.  You can cook the loaves directly on the stone or steel. If you don’t have either of these, no worries.  You can cook the bread in a cast iron skillet in the oven.

I’ve made this bread recipe a couple times after trying a different recipe.  I prefer this recipe.  My pita remained a little light in color, even when I flipped them to get a little color but, it was still delicious.

It does not make a pita loaf that you’d find in the grocery store.  I hesitate to disparage grocery store pita because it is exactly the same as the pita you find in the Coney Islands here in Michigan. They taste ok but not like homemade.

Cook It Now, or Later

If you’re planning to cook it later, you can store the mixed dough in the refrigerator. After letting it rise for about 1-½ hour, punch it down, cover with cling wrap and sit it in the refrigerator overnight. You can also portion out the dough into balls and keep it in the refrigerator for a day as well, just seal it so it doesn’t form a crust.

How long does it last?  About 3 days in a tightly sealed container.  You can also freeze the pita loaves for up to three months. The pita bread recipe is adapted from Alexandra’s Kitchen and was the best and easiest one I’ve found.

Both the garlic sauce and pita bread are a great treat that’s easy to make for a few or for a crowd and is a perfect anytime snack.