Where did pita bread originate?

Pita bread originated in the Middle East, with roots in the ancient flatbreads of the Near East and Fertile Crescent. It belongs to a broad family of round, yeast-leavened wheat breads found across the Middle East, the eastern Mediterranean, and neighboring regions.

Its history reaches back far beyond the modern word “pita.” Archaeological evidence shows that Natufian people in what is now Jordan made primitive flatbread from wild grains about 14,500 years ago. Later, wheat and barley were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, helping bread become a central food in Mesopotamia and other early societies.

The familiar pocket forms when moisture in the dough turns to steam in a very hot oven, separating the bread into layers. However, historians caution that the steam-puffed pocket may be a later development; ancient and medieval records describe related flatbreads without clearly documenting the modern pocket. Pita is also called khubz, Arabic bread, or pocket bread in different contexts.