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I recently tried making a pita sandwich type thing, naturally it didn't go anywhere near as well as it did in the link I provided. This is mainly due to the fact I couldn't cut open or separate the pita so that I could essentially 'stuff' it.

I am using pretty standard pita bread, nothing fancy, and I haven't cooked them or heated them up or anything (my guess is that that would help with the cutting) and it really bothered me as I was looking forward to a nice pita sandwich for lunch!

Does anyone have any good techniques or hacks that makes opening a pita up much easier?

I've cut the bread in half so my desired goal is to have two half pita sandwiches but alas, no luck. Below is an image of what I am aiming for.

enter image description here

I have tried:

  • Pulling the two sides apart with my hands
  • Pushing flat against a work surface and trying to slice open with a knife

Any new suggestions?

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    Also make sure it isn't flat bread. Sometimes pita companies will make flat bread, but the packaging will say pita all over it and only say flat bread on one part. They look really similar in the package too.
    – Doug Watkins
    Commented Feb 24, 2015 at 23:09
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    This probably would have been more beneficial to the world on cooking.stackexchange.com.
    – Captain Obvious
    Commented May 29, 2015 at 17:44
  • You could use 2 pita breads and make a sandwitch without having to cut anything. I don't think that pita breads are designed to be cut.
    – papakias
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 8:26

6 Answers 6

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It does help if you heat them - this tends to make them puff up a bit, but even then you need a sharp knife to insert along a leading edge and then slice along, and the knife does need to be sharp and preferably serrated. I heat them in the wide slot toaster, that seems the most effective (rather than putting the oven on), they tend to go soggy in the microwave; I don't leave them long enough to actually toast them either. I find some form a 'pocket' quite nicely, and some don't, so out of a pack of, say, 6 standard supermarket own brand, half might open nicely and the other half just don't. I have to say, though, the pitta bread pictured looks quite different from the standard ones I usually buy, it seems thicker both sides with a good pocket of air in between, so maybe some brands are better than others.

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  • I tried this method last night and it did work much better - I found, though, that it didn't really split in half, one edge just sort of come away so I have one thin wall and another thick 'bready wall'
    – MrPhooky
    Commented Feb 25, 2015 at 8:49
  • @MrPhooky- I know exactly what you mean, and that's what I meant when I said it only works some of the time. I'd like to know what brand of pitta is shown in that photograph, cos even when the ones I buy do split a bit better, they don't look like that one, which has even thickness of bread both sides throughout, no dangly bits in the middle.
    – Bamboo
    Commented Feb 25, 2015 at 12:21
  • "I'd like to know what brand of pitta is shown in that photograph...". It could be that they opened 150 pitas to get the one that opened perfectly like that. Just my speculation/guess.
    – Kevin Fegan
    Commented Jan 2, 2018 at 5:42
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There are a few options to do this, without breaking the pita bread.

  • Heating up the bread in the microwave tends to warm it up and make it easier to cut because it puffs up more than before.

    Microwaved Pita Bread

  • Grilling each side in a frying pan for a few seconds - this warms the pita up and also makes the outsides crispy while the inside stays soft and warm, allowing you to cut it easily since the outside is essentially "encapsulating" the rest of the pita, preventing it from breaking.

  • Purchase pita pockets instead of pita bread - this is the last resort option as the pockets will come pre-cut and ready for use.
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Put it down flat on the counter, put you knife down, flat on the counter. Put / poke the knife into the (heated) pita and cut it open. Because of the handle the blade itself will be lifted from the counter just enough to be in the middle of the height of the pita.

The knife will be stable and the pita as well. This is a proven technique (by me :-).

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I saw a guy working in a Kebab shop in Jordan use an unforgettable technique: full sized razor knife/box cutter to cut and open pita bread

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I cut vertically along the pita, and open it up down the middle. I find it so much easier to stuff this way.

enter image description here

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Heat the pita until it's soft. Make a small slit in one end with a serrated knife. Then insert fingers and work open the rest of it.

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  • This just duplicates the accepted answer.
    – Chenmunka ♦
    Commented Jan 15, 2016 at 15:53

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