*** Welcome to piglix ***

Pita bread

Pita
Nablus souq pita 118 - Aug 2011.jpg
Place of origin Middle East
Main ingredients Flour, water, yeast, salt
 

Pita (/ˈpɪtə/ or US /ˈptə/) also known as Arabic bread, Lebanese bread, or Syrian bread, is a soft, slightly leavened flatbread baked from wheat flour, which originated in the Near East, most probably Mesopotamia around 2500 BC. It is used in many Mediterranean, Balkan, and Middle Eastern cuisines, and resembles other slightly leavened flatbreads such as Iranian nan-e barbari, Central and South Asian flatbreads (such as naan), and pizza crust.

The first known mention of the word in English was in 1936. The English word is borrowed from Modern Greek πίτα, in turn from the Byzantine Greek πίτα "bread, cake, pie, pitta" (attested in 1108) and possibly from the Ancient Greek πίττα or πίσσα "pitch/resin" (for the gloss), or Ancient Greek πικτή (pikte), "fermented pastry," which may have passed to Latin as "picta" cf. pizza. It was received into Levantine Arabic (as fatteh, since Arabic lacks the sound /p/). Other hypotheses trace the word back to the Classical Hebrew word patt פת (literally "a morsel of bread"). It is spelled like the Aramaic pittəṭā/pittā (פיתה), from which it was received into Byzantine Greek (see above). Hypotheses also exist for Germanic or Illyrian intermediaries.


...
Wikipedia

...