Pita

Pita ( or US: ; Greek: πίτα; Hebrew: פִּיתָּה) or pitta (British English), also known as Greek bread (Greek: Ελληνικό ψωμί, romanized: Ellinikó psomí), Arabic bread, Arab bread (Arabic: خبز عربي, romanized: khubz ʿArabī), Syrian bread, Lebanese bread, and pocket bread, is a family of yeast-leavened round flatbreads baked from wheat flour, common in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and neighboring areas. It includes the widely known version with an interior pocket. In the United Kingdom, the term is used for pocket versions such as the Greek pita, used for barbecues as a souvlaki wrap. The Western name pita may sometimes be used to refer to various other types of flatbreads that have different names in their local languages, such as numerous styles of Arab khubz ('bread').

Etymology

The first mention of the word in English cited in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1936. The English word is borrowed from Modern Greek πίτα (píta, 'bread, cake, pie'), in turn from Byzantine Greek (attested in 1108), possibly from Ancient Greek πίττα (pítta) or πίσσα (píssa), both meaning 'pitch/resin', or from πικτή (piktḗ, 'fermented pastry'), which may have passed to Latin as picta cf. pizza. Other hypotheses trace the Greek word back to the Classical Hebrew word פת (patt, lit. 'a morsel of bread'). It is spelled like the Aramaic פיתא (pittā), from which it was received into Byzantine Greek (see above). Hypotheses also exist for Germanic or Illyrian intermediaries.