Sagebrush

In this pita bread recipe, we use a stove for heating the bread instead of a hot oven. Our stove is at a better work level than the oven, is easier to access for the short cooking “baking” times without a door in the way, and tends to heat the kitchen less during summer.

Low(er) Carb Pitas

1 cup warm water
1 Tbsp olive oil
(1/2 tsp molasses)

1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup wheat gluten
1/2 cup wheat bran
1/2 cup oat bran
2 Tbsp flax meal
t Tbsp spoonable Splenda
1 1/2 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt

Add liquid ingredients to bread maker, then dry ingredients. Process on dough cycle. (Adjust water or flour as desired for a medium pliable dough.)

After first rising, divide into 6 to 8 balls and let rest 15 minutes, covered with a cloth. On a lightly floured surface, roll each ball into a pita-sized disk of uniform thickness, about 20 to 24cm in diameter. Let rest for 20 minutes, covered with a cloth, not stacked on top of each other.

Here is the tricky part: Heat a large heavy (non-stick) un-greased fry pan on the stove to high or medium-high heat. Place one of the disks onto the pan for a minute or so, until small bubbles start to appear in the dough,

and then immediately gently flip over. The pita “should” puff up the rest of the way like a balloon, forming an inner pocket, after another minute or two. Set aside to cool and repeat process with remaining disks, one at a time.

If pitas do not puff consistently, try adjusting these variables: pan temperature, gluten ratio, resting time, thickness of disk.

Related Posts: What We Bake 4, 3, 2, 1

The Fresh Loaf has great pita tips. Carb-Lite has many wonderful low-carb bakery recipes.

Oddstrument Collection is having a contest for garden musical instruments:

Things like wind chimes, outdoor gongs, bells, fountains, musical sculptures, “wind banjos”, etc. Think solar, wind, water powered and beyond.

[via :Make]

Related posts: Chime Variations, Building Wind Chimes

(image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Michael F. Zbyszynski describes how to modify a solar yard light to make cricket sounds in this article from Make: (PDF)

[kudos Make: blog]

Bioacoustician Bernie Krause is interviewed by Jennifer Ouellette for NewScientist. His project Wild Sanctuary aims to archive nature soundscapes before they are lost to human development.

video link

[hat tip Cocktail Party Physics]

If you enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s geek-historical-fiction Quicksilver and haven’t discovered David Bodanis Passionate Minds, then run, don’t walk, to the nearest bookseller or library. This real-life account of the turbulent relationship between two premier minds of the Enlightenment is not to be missed.

images c/o Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons

The author gives an account of copy protection used by Voltaire. Printers were suspected of making several thousand extra copies of his books and keeping the profits for themselves. He asked the Prauts of Paris to print a few hundred copies of the first half of Zadig and ship them to him for safe-keeping.

What he neglected to tell them was that under similar secrecy he’d had a like-minded printer in Lorraine prepare a few hundred copes of the second half. He now collected the two sets of unbound pages, hired a few nimble-fingered local women, and had them do all the binding and sewing. The swindlers in Paris and Lorraine had been outswindled: he now distributed, through trusted business associates in Paris, small numbers of exactly the edition he wished.