# Who invented pita bread?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-invented-pita-bread/59290>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 24, 2001, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-invented-pita-bread/59290 "2001-03-24T06:26:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2001, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-invented-pita-bread/59290/1 "2001-03-24T06:26:38Z")

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Well, it’s, like, hollow.  
This guy wasn’t a rocket scientest, he had fire, a rock, maybe a stick.

Yeah, I know “pita bread” is redundant.

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**Author:** ![JavaMaven1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cab0a1/32.png) [@JavaMaven1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JavaMaven1)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2001, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-invented-pita-bread/59290/2 "2001-03-24T07:26:00Z")

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From **The Oxford Companion to Food** by Alan Davidson:

> [@](#):
>
> **Pita** The Israeli and western name for the Arab bread called _khubz’adi_(ordinary bread) or names meaning ‘Arab, Egyptian, Syrian bread’ or _kumaj_ (a Turkish loanword properly meaning a bread cooked in ashes), baked in a brick bread oven.

Pita bread is leavened by yeast, and shaped by hand, much like a tortilla. It is left to rest before baking, where it forms a “skin” on the outside. When baked, the inside puffs, leaving the bread hollow inside. It wasn’t necessarily _invented_ by someone, because it was originally used as a flat bread–it was just that someone figured out you could open it and stuff it. Pita, in its more original form, is usually torn into pieces, and used as a scooping utensil for food.