Editing Pita (section)

==History==
Pita has roots in the prehistoric flatbreads of the Near East.<ref name="Marks 2010"/> There is evidence from about 14,500 years ago, during the [[Stone Age]], that the [[Natufian]] people in what is now [[Jordan]] made a kind of flatbread from wild cereal grains.<ref>{{Citation |year=2018 |title=World's oldest bread found at prehistoric site in Jordan |journal=The Jerusalem Post |url=https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Worlds-oldest-bread-found-at-prehistoric-site-in-Jordan-562680 |access-date=16 July 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/bread-history-cooking-stone-age-middle-east-archaeology-discovery-a8450276.html|title=Archaeologists find world's oldest bread and new evidence of sophisticated cooking dating back 14,000 years|work=The Independent|access-date=17 July 2018|language=en-GB}}</ref> Ancient wheat and barley were among the [[Neolithic founder crops|earliest domesticated crops]] in the [[Neolithic]] period of about 10,000 years ago, in the [[Fertile Crescent]]. By 4,000 years ago, bread was of central importance in societies such as the [[Babylon]]ian culture of [[Mesopotamia]], where the earliest-known written records and recipes of bread-making originate,<ref>{{cite news|agency=[[Associated Press]]|access-date=16 March 2019|title=Mastering the Art of Babylonian Cooking|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/03/nyregion/mastering-the-art-of-babylonian-cooking.html|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=3 January 1988|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> and where pita-like flatbreads cooked in a ''tinûru'' (''tannur'' or ''tandoor'') were a basic element of the diet, and much the same as today's [[tandoor bread]], [[taboon bread]],<ref>{{cite book|first1=Jean|last1=Bottéro|title=The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PxnaaTzC8tMC&pg=PA47|pages=47–49|publisher=University of Chicago Press|date=15 April 2004|isbn=978-0-226-06735-3|via=Google Books}}</ref> and [[laffa]], an Iraqi flatbread with many similarities with pita. However, there is no record of the steam-puffed, two-layer "pocket pita" in the ancient texts, or in any of the medieval Arab cookbooks, and according to food historians such as [[Charles Perry (food writer)|Charles Perry]] and [[Gil Marks]] it was likely a later development.<ref name="Marks 2010"/><ref>{{cite book|first1=Anat|last1=Helman|title=Jews and Their Foodways|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q7CYCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA196|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=28 October 2015|isbn=978-0-19-026543-4|via=Google Books}}</ref>