I love the weekends. Being able to get up when it suits you, not having a care in the world and knowing that there is no pressure to get anything done.

If only life were that simple.

Whilst my weekends are not usually quite as busy as those pesky weeks that seem to keep interrupting them, it’s very rare for there to be nothing urgent or important to get done. In fact I don’t think I’ve had a weekend with nothing booked since September, and looking at December I can’t see any free time on the horizon. That’s why this last weekend I did absolutely nothing. Sure there were little things like doing the washing and the shopping, but the most strenuous thing I made myself do was to go Christmas shopping on Saturday (which completely back fired as I bought presents for myself and no one else. Oops).

Yup, with lie-ins and some blissful TV watching on the cards I now feel refreshed and ready to face a busy December. It also meant that there was time for my favourite of weekend treats - brunch!

I absolutely love brunch - there’s the excuse to drink coffee and fruit juice, eating delicious freshly cooked food and knowing that there is little else going on around you that really can’t wait another half hour. In this particular instance it was scrambled eggs on the menu, to be served up in home-made pita breads. Heaven. My new-found love of scrambled eggs (yes, really - only about 2 months ago when I started questioning why I was blocking out a smoked salmon eating opportunity by not liking them), fitting well with my thoughts of making pits breads from my Fabulous Baker Brothers book.

It turns out that pita breads are ridiculously easy to make, taking a standard bread dough after the first rise and rolling it out (I still haven’t bought a rolling pin, so it was back out with a wine bottle wrapped in clingfilm, ever the classy one as I am). Scrambled eggs are, as I’m sure you’re well aware, also stupidly easy to make, so this brunch was not exactly a stretch. It was, however, pretty damned amazing.

Pita Breads and Scrambled Eggs

The recipe for these pita breads is adapted from my copy of the (self titled) Fabulous Baker Brothers book and the scrambled eggs came from the back of my head, where random recipes are stored. It makes enough brunch for two reasonable hungry people.

Ingredients

for the pita breads:
300g plain flour
10ml rapeseed oil
4g fast-action yeast
180ml water
6g salt

for the eggs:
4 eggs
10g butter
20ml milk
pepper
30g parmesan

Directions

In a large bowl, sift in the flour then add in the oil and the salt. Mix the yeast into the water, the water should be look-warm (35-37ºC is best). Pour the water into the flour and mix it in with your hands, the mixture should form in to a slightly sticky dough (if it doesn’t add a little more water or oil). One it has formed a dough, tip it out on to a floured work surface and knead for about ten to fifteen minutes, until the gluten stretches have formed. Set the dough to one side in a covered bowl (a shower cap is perfect for covering it) and leave it to rise until it’s doubled in size (should be about an hour).

As the dough nears its rise turn the oven on to 130ºC and put a baking stone in the centre to heat up. Once the dough is risen dived it in to four parts. Take each of these lumps and flatten it a bit with your hands and then put down on a floured work surface. Using a rolling pin (or wine bottle) roll it out. Don’t turn it, this is how you make the pita bread shape.

Crack your eggs into a bowl and whisk until they are combined. Then add in the milk, butter, cheese and pepper, whisk again until it is all mixed in. Put the bowl in the microwave for 45 seconds and then stir.

When the eggs go in the microwave, put the pita breads in the oven on the baking stone. They will take about 3 minutes in the oven and will puff up massively - this is OK, it’s what they’re meant to do.

Whisk the eggs again to break them up and put them in the microwave for another 45 seconds. Repeat the process until ready.

Once the pita breads have inflated and have coloured slightly, take them out of the oven. Be careful, as they will probably exhale steam as you do so! Place them on a cooling wrack.

When both the eggs and pita breads are done, serve them up on a plate and enjoy your brunch.

Craig Craig (257 Posts)

Edinburgh-dwelling, baking and food-obsessed, twenty-something adventure enthusiast. Runs on liberal amounts of coffee, cheese, cake and gin; bribable with same.