Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - 70
Upstate South Carolina
Baking Pita Bread,
Building Community
These enterprising brothers and their families have cooked up Middle
Eastern favorites in Greenville for 35 years.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY FRED & JILL SAUCEMAN
W
70 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
hen the oven reaches 800 degrees,
it's time. From that point on, the process
of baking fresh pita bread goes
quickly.
The baking time is short, only about 30 seconds.
But it's the culmination of work that started almost
three hours earlier, just after dawn, at The Pita
House in Greenville, South Carolina. And it happens
every day.
The oven, powered by gas, was brought to Greenville
all the way from the Holy Land in Israel. The Namouz
brothers, owners of The Pita House, were born
near the city of Nazareth.
That " tunnel " oven has been operating for about 18
years, but brothers Ziad and Zuhair have been proudly
serving the flavors of their Middle Eastern homeland
to diners in the South Carolina Upstate since 1988,
when they started the business with their brother Nazih,
who died two years ago. The brothers are Palestinian
Christians-Catholics, to be exact, Ziad adds.
" It took the electric company about three months
to calibrate this custom-made oven, " says Ziad, as he
stands next to a work bench that holds a vise grip, pliers,
drills and other equipment he and his brother Zuhair
use in handling their own oven maintenance. The
Namouz brothers' standards are exacting. The pita
dough must rise on a special kind of wood, " approved
by the health department, " proclaims Zuhair. " Regular
plywood will not do. "
The place where the bread is now baked used to be
a dress shop. But slowly, as tastes for falafel and stuffed
grape leaves grew in Greenville, so did the business, and
the brothers added the grocery section and the bakery.
Hani Namouz, Zuhair's son, was born one year before
the restaurant opened. " Back in 1988, there was
not a whole lot of diversity in food in this area, " he tells
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Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023
Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - 3
Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - 4
Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - 5
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Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - Cover4
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