Last Updated on April 12, 2024 by Fasting Planet
You’re meeting up with a friend this weekend and they mention wanting to prepare a dish with pita bread. Before you agree to the meal, you want to do more research on this bread variety. One thing you’re eager to know is this: can vegans eat pita bread?
Pita bread’s main ingredients are salt, yeast, flour, and water, so it should be considered vegan-safe. However, store-bought pita bread may add ingredients such as honey, eggs, and milk to fortify the bread and impart freshness. Avoid these bread brands.
In this article, we’ll explain in greater detail whether pita bread is considered vegan, including homemade pita bread and that which you buy at the grocery store. Those who are new to veganism will certainly not want to miss this!
What Is Pita Bread?
Before we get into its vegan status, let’s discuss pita bread as a whole. Sometimes spelled as pitta in British English, pita bread is a type of flatbread that hails from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The earliest versions of pita bread were made with wild cereal grains among the Natufian people some 14,500 years back. Those were Stone Age times.
In Mesopotamia, bread had become a societal standard, with peoples sharing recipes for making bread about 4,000 years back. These peoples used to make pita bread in a tandoor or tinuru oven. Today, to bake pita bread, you need to crank up your oven between 450 and 475 degrees Fahrenheit.
This high temperature is needed to make steam out of the water within the pita dough. This is where the puffiness of pita pockets comes from. Once it’s out of the oven, the pita will deflate somewhat, but the air remains between the pita layers so it holds some shape. Pita bread is convenient to make since it only takes 15 minutes of proofing before you can bake it.
Pita bread is enjoyed in a multitude of ways all over the world. In Greek cuisine, pitas are featured in karydopita or walnut cake as well as spanakopita or spinach pie. Cyprus in the Mediterranean makes gyros, lountza, halloumi, sheftalia, and souvlakia out of pitas.
You can also crisp pita for pita chips or use it in falafel, wrapped kebabs, and hummus.
According to the USDA, a large pita, which is 60 grams, contains:
- 165 calories
- 7 grams of total fat (1 percent of your recommended daily value)
- 3 grams of polyunsaturated fat
- 1 grams of monounsaturated fat
- 0 milligrams of cholesterol
- 322 milligrams of sodium (13 percent of your recommended daily value)
- 72 milligrams of potassium (2 percent of your recommended daily value)
- 33 grams of carbs (11 percent of your recommended daily value)
- 3 grams of dietary fiber (5 percent of your recommended daily value)
- 5 grams of protein (10 percent of your recommended daily value)
- 5 percent calcium
- 4 percent iron
- 4 percent magnesium
Is Homemade Pita Bread Vegan?
If you have a baking pan and a working oven, then you can make authentic pita bread at home. The recipe requires extra virgin olive oil, kosher salt, all-purpose flour, sugar, active dry yeast, and water.
Remember, it takes about 15 minutes for the pita bread ingredients to proof so you don’t have to wait hours upon hours to make your bread. If you remember our article on the vegan status of sourdough bread, that’s certainly not the case when making sourdough! You need to tend to a starter for at least 24 hours.
Since bread is straightforward to make and requires so few ingredients, there’s no need to worry about animal products and byproducts in it. Even yeast? Yes, especially yeast. We wrote about this in another post, but now seems like a good time to talk about whether yeast is vegan.
Yeast is part of the fungus kingdom with mushrooms. Attributing to their similarities, both yeast and mushrooms are alive. This fact makes some vegans feel iffy about consuming mushrooms and yeast. After all, animals are alive at one point too before people eat them.
Yes, but animals have something that yeast doesn’t, nor do mushrooms. What is that? Animals have a central nervous system. Those in the Animalia kingdom are capable of feeling pain, fear, and other vivid emotions while yeast and mushrooms cannot. You don’t have to worry about hurting yeast when you pour it into your dough ingredients and add hot water. Yeast doesn’t feel pain despite that it’s living. (That’s also true of mushrooms if you’re curious).
Whether you’re the one who’s baking or it will be your friend doing it, homemade pita bread should be vegan. If not, you can always ask your friend to make tweaks to their recipe to ensure the bread’s vegan status.
Is Store-Bought Pita Bread Vegan?
Perhaps your friend didn’t make the pita bread themselves, but rather, they bought it from the grocery store. Since bread is bread, do you really have to worry about the pita being vegan? Actually, yes!
There’s a big difference between the bread you make at home versus that sold at the store. When you bake pita bread, you expect to eat it relatively quickly. The bread doesn’t have to ship anywhere as it’s already reached its destination. Commercial bread manufacturing may add preservatives, sweeteners, thickeners, and all nature of ingredients to keep the bread in good condition so it’s still fluffy by the time it gets to the grocery store.
Since bread is usually nutritionally empty, bread manufacturers often fortify bread with more nutrients and minerals. This sometimes requires the addition of non-vegan ingredients.
Here are some ingredients to look for as you shop for pita bread.
Lecithin
This one can be confusing, because the emulsifying fat known as lecithin can come from plant or animal tissue. If you see soybeans anywhere on the pita bread’s ingredients list, that’s usually a good indicator that the lecithin is vegan. However, if you spot eggs on the ingredients list instead, then the lecithin is non-vegan. If you just can’t tell either way since the ingredients list doesn’t make it clear, then skip that pita brand and continue shopping for a bread that’s lecithin-free.
Monoglycerides
The glyceride class known as monoglycerides comes together via ester bonding to attach a fatty acid and glycerol molecule. It’s another fatty emulsifier that makes the bread moist and gives it a soft, fluffy texture. Like lecithin, monoglycerides can either come from animal fat or soybean oil. If the ingredients don’t point you in the direction of which, then avoid pita bread with monoglycerides.
Diglycerides
Diacylglycerol or diglycerides have twice the fatty acid chains as monoglycerides. However, they’re utilized the exact same way in bread manufacturing and are to be avoided if they’re animal-based.
Honey
Some store-bought bread has honey to make the flavor sweeter, but that probably wouldn’t be the case for pita bread. Instead, a food manufacturer will use honey to maintain the moisture of the pita pockets so they don’t feel stale when you bring them home. Honey is a bee byproduct and is not allowable on the vegan diet.
Gelatin
When gelatin is mixed with water in bread-making, the dough has a stretchier texture. You’re more likely to see gelatin as an ingredient in commercial pizza dough than pita bread, but still, it never hurts to check the ingredients list anyway.
Dairy
All nature of dairy products might be in your store-bought pita bread. By pouring milk into the bread dough, it can absorb water better so you might get airier pita pockets. The dough will also be softer. Dairy can fortify bread, so your pita pockets might include cream, buttermilk, whey, and/or casein.
Vegan-Safe Pita Bread Brands to Shop
The above section can make you nervous about ever buying pita bread from the store again, but there’s no need to be! Here are a few vegan pita brands that are safe for you to consume.
Toufayan Bakeries Low-Carb Pita Bread
First is this low-carb pita bread from Toufayan Bakeries. Their pita bread includes ingredients like stevia extract as a sweetener, wheat starch, rice flour, guar gum, xanthan gum, fumaric acid, calcium propionate as a preservative, potassium sorbate as a preservative, sugar, salt, potassium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium acid pyrophosphate, plant-based L-cysteine, plant-based monoglycerides, plant-based diglycerides, calcium sulfate, soy flour, vegetable oil, wheat protein isolate, oat fiber, cellulose, wheat gluten, folic acid, riboflavin, thiamin mononitrate, iron, niacin, malted barley flour, and enriched wheat flour.
Joseph’s Flax, Oat Bran, and Whole Wheat Flour Pita Bread
Try Joseph’s flax, oat bran, and whole wheat flour pita bread as well. Each pita is 6.5 inches and includes lots of omega-3 ALAs and up to six grams of protein per pita. The full ingredients list is enzymes, corn starch, plant-based L-cysteine, microcrystalline cellulose, calcium propionate, sodium metabisulfite, monoglyceride, fumaric acid, potassium sorbate, sodium bicarbonate, dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate, calcium sulfate, yeast, golden flaxseed, folic acid, riboflavin, thiamine mononitrate, enriched wheat flour, soy protein isolate, soy flour, oat fiber, wheat gluten, whole wheat flour, and water.
Bfree Vegan Gluten-Free Pita Bread
Vegan, soy-free, non-GMO, nut-free, kosher, gluten-free, and dairy-free, Bfree’s pita bread is just what you’re looking for. The ingredients are tartaric acid as a mold inhibitor, malic acid as a mold inhibitor, citric acid as a mold inhibitor, glucono-delta-lactone, agar-agar, salt, xanthan gum, yeast, canola oil, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, apple juice concentrate, corn flour, pea fiber, pea protein, psyllium husk, rice flour, fermented quinoa, inulin, bamboo fiber, glycerol, buckwheat flour, tapioca starch, corn starch, potato flour, rice flour, and water.
Conclusion
Pita is an airy bread that’s often lighter calorically than white bread. Its ingredients don’t differ all that much from other types of bread, so making pita bread yourself at home is perfectly vegan-safe. Store-bought pita bread may contain dairy, gelatin, and animal-derived fats to preserve and/or fortify the bread, so always check the ingredients list!
Related reading: Is Pectin Vegan?