By Joel Magalnick, Editor, The Jewish Sound
Somewhere in the deepest nooks and crannies of Jerusalem’s old city is a small factory that churns out thousands of pieces of round pita bread each day. Softer and more pillowy than the more dime-a-dozen variety found in the local shouks, it was these pitas that inspired Jeff Alhadeff as a student nearly 20 years ago.
“You know Howard Schultz’s story, how he went to Italy and was going from coffee shop to coffee shop and falling in love?” Alhadeff, 37, says. “I felt like I was in the eternal capital of the Jewish people, I was mostly studying, I was involved in religious pursuits and inspired the way I wanted to be. On the side, I thought, this [pita] is really good here and we do not get this at home.”
Upon his return to Seattle, for about 16 years, Alhadeff tinkered on and off with recipes and baking techniques, “different types of flour, different techniques of shaping, baking, that kind of stuff,” he says. Finally, about a year ago, when he acquired a pot that reaches very high temperatures, he found the right combination.
“Once you’re able to get that high of a temperature, it really makes the pitot incredibly different from what you can produce in a conventional oven,” he says. “So I decided to start a business on a simple level.”
So in October, Old City Pita was born. When Alhadeff calls the business simple, he means it. He has no plans to give up his software-industry job, and as a one-man show there’s a limit to the amount of pita he can make.
“The thing about pitot in particular is they’re fairly labor intensive, and so unless I get to be incredibly faster at shaping them, in order for me to produce this quality product I’d like to make it’s not a feasible full-time profession,” he says.
The alternative, hiring people to do the grunt work and the baking, is not something Alhadeff is yet ready to hand off.
“I like doing all of it myself,” he says.
At this point, the only way to get an eight-pack of Old City Pita is to order them online through Alhadeff’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/OldCityPita. Customers can both sign up to be placed on the email list and to place orders. In his customer emails, Alhadeff announces his baking days and when packages will be available for pickup from his home.
The type of pita he makes are thick, with a large pocket. “The ideal pita in my mind has…a little bit of chewiness, a little bit of toughness in the crust, and the dough is going to have a chewy consistency,” he says.
And, most important, he says, “they should be able to be completely stuffed with as much protein and vegetables as you can imagine to put in them and still hold together.”
In Seattle, he has yet to find anything close.
Though Alhadeff keeps a kosher home and his friends trust he’s baking to specifications of kashrut, they have not been certified as such. Should the business continue to grow, he said Old City Pita would seriously consider Va’ad certification. He operates under a Washington State Cottage food license, which allows him to bake in his home. The next big step, should he take it, would likely mean moving to a commercial kitchen that would require rabbinic inspection to maintain his current kosher customers’ trust.
But he’s not there yet. At this point, Alhadeff is content to use his own kitchen as the testing grounds for his love of bread and a happy, satiated customer.
“The most gratifying part about this for me is being able to provide people with an experience that they’re not able to get in Seattle otherwise,” he says.