Flatbreads are notorious, and the only way to know is tons of experience with the same dough and the same oven. When you can look at the sky and the wood and, without concious calculation, know if you need another log or stick, and your hand over the oven floor tells you for sure it's ready, and the stickiness of the dough on this damp day telks you you need two pinches more flour, then you can be confident on your outcome. Until then, the only thing to do is what you're doing. Keep an eye. Learn the signs. Have plans for using the imperfect ones.

I have an extremely accurate electric oven, and do better making pita on the stove, where each one gets total attention. It also took going through a bunch of recipes to find a good one for such a simple thing. I think flatbreads are best learned at mom's knee, but my mother bought her pita. Thing is, there's no hiding. Until the recipe is part of you, you just have to keep trying.

I consider myself an "expert" mostly because I have baked soooo much bread. A thermo pen will tell you the internal temp and prevent under baking....and over abking if you test before it's over baked. But if you wait too long to test, and it's over baked....it's no help.

But when you learn what perfectly baked bread looks like and how your ovens bake with different recipes of breads etc you won't need the thermometer. a look and a tap will tell you when it's done.

Because we have to ship our cookies and rely on cardboard and bubble wrap to keep them in one piece, we always overbake them. So far, no one has complained.

I like soft soft breads and crispy cookies. I've learned a lot through trial and error - a.k.a. experience - over the many years I've been baking.

I have an electric oven as well, and have rarely baked in a gas oven. I imagine learning to use a wood-fired one would be a big challenge.

I bake my flatbreads in a hot iron skillet on the stove. You can bake them however brown you want. Actually , I use two skillets at at time to make it faster. I do this a lot in the summertime to avoid having to heat up the oven and the house. But, I make them throughout the year too.

Just about any raised dough will puff up in teh middle, like pita.

It is really interesting to do a search on old world baking of flatbreads, all over the world. In many places the bread is not made at home, but, rather it is supplied by a local baker who keeps an oven hot and going all the time. It is a continuning process every day. It takes a lot to keep the home fires burning, so to speak. Best to leave it to the person who owns and stokes that stone oven.

Of course, we have no such here in the US.

I have a friend who built one. He is an engineer with that kind of thinking and he built it right. But, it takes such a prep to get it hot. So, they have to plan to use it sicne you cant just turn on the gas or electricity.

In some communities of yesteryear there would be a communal oven that was heated on a regular basis and all could bring their bread to bake. Hubs Italian grandmother would take her bread to the baker to bake it. Many an old apartment or tenament had no oven.

In some parts of the world all of the baking is left to someone in the community that supplies that service and they may have no oven in the home such as most of us have.

Flabreads will get hard if you over bake them. The ones in the photo look as if they will be hard. Is that so?

I never waste bread around here. You can take old bread and cut it into chunks, toss it in that hot skillet until they are a bit dry and toss around with butter, olive oil, salt and garlic, or whatever it it that you want, and the make excellent littel crunchies to add to a bowl of soup or salad. I rarely ever discard any bread. But, the result is only as good as the bread that you started with. I try to buy the best I can, although the selection of good quality bread is pretty slim out there. I both buy and bake.

Funny, I was thinking to start a very similar thread about shrimp! I can’t stand when I’m not convinced it’s cooked through, and this leads to overcook them.

But the answer to your question is yes, I do tend to overbake. For me it’s clearly inexperience.

How hot does your wood fired oven get? (I’m jealous, by the way!) I make pita stovetop in cast iron and find them very forgiving. Or maybe I’m just not picky enough.

Now, off to find your pide thread! I love pide and have made it with gyro meat and Greek cheeses. Been a while though.

@foodonastump Somewhere between very hot and very very very hot.

I haven’t used the WFO as much in the last few years. Covid and pizza parties weren’t a good combo. I hope to get back to it this year.

I tend to run it fairly hot but my mom’s guy loves it. He gets the fire roaring. I actually prefer it to be a little more moderate. For a pizza to take a minute or 3 and not be charcoal in 30 seconds.