gyro gonna love this one!

Hehehe I crack myself up sometimes...

For various reasons, I always think to make homemade bread at around 3:30 in the afternoon. Its usually around the time I start to think about what I am going to make for dinner, and because, generally, at least one of the kids is napping at that time, I start feeling ambitious.

The problem with my timing is this; homemade bread usually takes more than an hour and a half to make. I mean seriously, how many times does this bread have to rise?!?! For this reason, I usually end up making something like cornbread or biscuits, breads that don't need time to rise (who am I kidding, I usually buy a loaf of french bread from the grocery store.) But not today! Today, I made whole wheat pitas. They take about 2 hours total which isn't terrible by homemade bread standards.

I found this recipe for whole wheat pita bread a few months ago, just after we moved and they turned out good the first time and AMAZING this time. I'm thinking my yeast might have not been any good last time because the bubbly mixture didn't look like this:

See? Nice and foamy, just like the recipe said.

I accidentally added all the water in the first step because I wasn't paying enough attention (little brother wasn't happy that mom was making bread and not snuggling him) and just dumped it all in. It didn't seem to hurt them. The other change I made is adding several tablespoons of flaxseed meal to the mix before I let it rise the second time. Its pretty awesome stuff and it added some cool texture to the bread.

So now I needed something to go in my pitas and what better than gyro meat?! Well I didn't have any ground lamb in my fridge, not something I generally have sitting around, but I did have some frozen turkey burger. Turkey is better for you anyways, right? So I stuck that in the microwave to thaw and while that was going I used my handy dandy food processor to shred an onion. There was a lot water from that so I scooped out those onions, put them in a cheesecloth and squeezed out all the moisture. They went back in the food processor (and I switched back to my pureeing attachment) along with the defrosted turkey, some salt, pepper, dried rosemary, thyme and oregano. This got pulverized into a meaty goo that did NOT photograph well. I sprayed some cooking spray in a loaf pan and patted the meat mixture into it (think meatloaf) and stuck it in a 375 degree oven for 30 min or so.

Its not particularly beautiful, but it sure was tasty! And who cares, it goes inside the gorgeous pitas which, by the way, looked like this:

All that was left to do was assemble the gyros: stick a thick slice or two of the meat on the pita, add some lettuce, tomato and Tzatziki sauce (I used store-bought Tzatziki because I already had some, but its not really very hard to make some at home.)

I think the only thing I would change would be to add some thinly sliced red onions, but it was really yummy and we estimated them to be about 280 calories each. Not too bad, I was definitely full after one.