Bagels, a third variation

After a year away and two not-entirely-satisfactory batches, (scroll down on this page to see them) I'm returning to making bagels. The recipe I'm using this time is from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. There doesn't seem to be anything distinctively Reinhartian about it, though, so far as I can see. His schtick is soaking whole grains overnight to soften the hull-shards and this recipe doesn't contain any whole grains. I thought that, with this cookbook, he had joined no-knead and/or keep-dough-in-the-refrigerator-indefinitely crowds, but I don't see any sign of that here.

This recipe isn't particularly different from the last version I made. The only major distinction is a night in the refrigerator, but that's nearly always a good idea when baking bread. I do like that it measures the ingredients by weight for more precision. I want to do more of that in my baking. To add a little more distinctiveness, I thought I'd try the looped rope method of shaping the bagels instead of the poke-a-hole-through method I used last time.

Also, I doubled the recipe since bagels freeze well and are handy to have around.

Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons barley malt syrup
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 Tablespoon fine kosher salt
510 grams (a bit over 2 cups) lukewarm water
908 grams (around 7 cups) bread flour

poaching liquid:
2-3 quarts water
1 1/2 Tablespoons barley malt syrup
1 Tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon fine kosher salt

toppings:
poppy seeds
sesame seeds
dehydrated onion or garlic, rehydrated
coarse sea salt

1. Mix the malt syrup, yeast and salt in the water. Let sit while you measure out the flour. Mix into the flour until the dough forms a stiff, slightly shaggy ball. There should be just barely enough moisture for the flour. Let rest 5 minutes then knead for 3 minutes until gluten forms and the dough smoothes out. Add a little more flour if the dough is sticky. Place dough in a clean oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise 1 hour.

2. Dump dough out onto an unfloured surface and cut into pieces. I decided I wanted modestly-sized, but not mini-, bagels so I partitioned out 16 3 ounce pieces of dough.

3. Cover two baking sheets with sheets of parchment paper. Lightly oil the paper. Clear space in your refrigerator for the sheets to fit.

4. Roll each piece of dough out into a rope about 10 inches long with a little taper at each end. Hold the rope by one end, whip it around over your fist and catch the other end so the dough loop snugly encloses your hand. Roll the overlapping ends against your work surface with your palm until they're well fused (I didn't do the best job of this). Place each formed bagel on a baking sheet not worrying about leaving too much space around them as they're not going to be rising yet. When you've laid out all your bagels, lightly oil their tops, cover with plastic wrap, put in the refrigerator and wait a day.

5. Remove the bagels from the refrigerator 60 to 90 minutes before you want to start baking. After 60 minutes check if the bagels are ready by gently dropping one into a bowl of water. If it floats, they're ready. If your poaching liquid isn't ready yet, put the bagels in the refrigerator until it is. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Bring the poaching water to a boil in a large pot or dutch oven, lower heat to bring down to a simmer and add the malt syrup, baking soda and salt.

6. Gently add the bagels to the poaching liquid in batches. Don't overcrowd as they'll be expanding. Poach for 1 minute, flip them over and poach for 1 more. Remove from the liquid, dunk in your prefered the toppings (domed side down), and return to the parchment sheets with a little more space this time.

7. Put the bagels in the oven and turn the heat down to 450 degrees. Bake for 8 minutes, rotate and revolve the baking sheets, and bake for 8 to 12 minutes more until golden brown and a bit crisp.

Cool for at least a half hour before serving.

During cooling I noticed that these bagels have the appropriate distinctive malty smell. Funny how it's instantly recognizable as malty now but I never pegged it before even when I used malt previously. There's a touch of malt in the flavor and I think there's a little depth from the overnight in the fridge too. These taste just about right.

But really, the texture of a bagel is the important thing. The crust has a slight snap to it, like a good hot dog. That's perfect, but it never lasts. You only get that when the bagels are fresh from the oven.

The insides are chewy but not overly dense. There are uneven holes inside which means I didn't get out all the air bubbles I should have. That's not too bad, but the uneven holes through their centers are less appealing; the rope method is harder than it looks.

Aesthetically, not fabulous, but the flavor and texture is dead on. I'm quite happy with the results and will need some good reason to stray from this recipe from now on.
---
Report from tomorrow: the bagels went stale remarkably quickly. Luckily I put most into the freezer immediately so they should be OK. I might add a bit of whole wheat and/or rye next time to improve their shelf life.

CSA week 16 - Sephardic celery and artichoke stew

Last time I promised a recipe for something you'd never heard of before. All I had left from the CSA was a head of celery so it was a tough assignment, but I think I've got something here to suit. I found this recipe over at Sephardicrecipes.com where the poster says it was reconstructed by his father based on a dish his mother used to make in Morocco. I don't see it, or anything like it elsewhere on the web, in my north African cookbook or in the Sephardic cookbooks Google Books has scanned. If you have heard of it, do please tell me where.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
0 - 1/2 pound stew meat [If you're going to use meat, lamb or goat would probably be most appropriate. Pork is right out. I don't have a local source of stew lamb or goat (although I'm sure it's not hard to come by in Miami if you don't insist on the source being between UM and my home. I used beef.]
3 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 bunch celery, chopped into 2-inch lengths
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup cold water
7 ounces (by weight) pitted Moroccan green olives, drained, rinsed and halved if large [I chose my grocery poorly and didn't find specifically Moroccan olives so I think I'm missing some spices that would have been included. I picked a tart olive without herbs in the brine to substitute.]
7 ounces (by weight) artichoke hearts, roughly chopped [My grocery had two choices and I picked the less vinegary one. The dish benefits from a bit of acid so you should pick the other one.]

1. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmering. add the meat and cook until half browned. Salt judiciously with a mind towards how salty your olives are. Add the garlic, turn the heat down to medium, and cook until the garlic is fragrant and becoming translucent.

2. Add the bay leaf and spices. Cook briefly until spices are fragrant. Add celery and water. Salt again otherwise your celery will be extra bland, but be careful. Stir well, bring to a boil, cover, turn heat down to low and cook, stirring occasionally, 25 minutes until celery is just getting tender.

3. Add olives and artichoke hearts. Turn heat up a little and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes more until most of the water has evaporated.

Adjust seasoning and acid level. Garnish with parsley and/or cilantro, let cool a bit as hot olives are just weird, and serve over couscous.



The celery and artichoke end up quite soft so the slight chew of the olives and the meaty bite of the beef are important to add textural interest to the dish. Even after the cooking, the olives are pretty intense, dominating the dish, but the mild celery mellows them out and adds a slight sweetness. It's no great showcase for the celery, but the celery isn't just filler either. The artichoke hearts don't do much. There's some hint of their flavor in the mix, particularly as some of the leaves have come off and fallen apart, but it's mild and not far from the cooked celery. The spices counterpoint, laying earthiness under the tartness of the olives and tying the various elements together. The beef adds some bulk, but I don't think the flavor quite works. Go with the lamb or mutton if you can get it. A little gaminess would stand up better to the other flavors here. Other than that, I do like the dish. It's an unusual (to me) flavor combination, but not hard to get used to and quite pleasant.

Gravlax - variation one

Since I knew I'd be baking bagels this weekend, I thought I'd make some gravlax that more closely resembled lox than my first batch.

To recap, gravax: take one fillet of salmon, sprinkle it with 1 Tablespoon salt and 1 Tablespoon sugar, add a big pile of dill (and optionally other flavorings), wrap tightly in plastic and press under a heavy weight in the refrigerator for three days, flipping every 12 hours. For this batch I ditched the dill and substituted a generous teaspoon of finely ground lapsang souchon smoked tea. I ground my own from loose leaf, but you could just tear open a teabag or use smoked salt or a few drops of liquid smoke. Or smoked sugar if such a thing exists.

Here it is after the three days were up:


And here it is sliced topping one of my mini-bagels:


The experiment was a success; the flavor is dead-on for lox. I was afraid the smokiness would be overwhelming--it certainly was in the run-off liquid. The amount of tea I added was a pure guess so a screw up was quite possible. But the flavors turned out nicely balanced between the smoke, salt and sweet (and fishy, of course). The smoke is, of course, the most important part, but as I looked up lox recipes the few I found called for brown sugar. I've been using the local organic stuff that, while not brown, is a bit underprocessed so it's off-white which I think has added a note of molasses now that I'm looking for it. I'll need to try full-on brown sugar at some point.

The texture is not quite the same as lox, though. Good quality lox is silky but can be sliced paper thin without tearing. My gravlax tears more easily and is rather denser and meatier. The real lox process is wet brining, freshening with a soak in unsalted water and then cold smoking. No pressing involved, but some drying from the smoke. The silkiness comes from all the retained moisture and it must be that last step that gives it it's structural integrity. I wonder if pressing for just the last 12 hours would approximate that. That's going on my to-do list, but only after I've tried some other fish types and adding other flavors. No reason to try reproducing what I can buy at the corner deli when there's a world of possibilities out there.

New York bagels (or some approximation)

Back in my Parisian bagels post I listed a handful of alterations to the recipe that would bring it closer to the New York version. Not that the Parisian version was at all bad, it just wasn't New York and that's what I want to try to make. Today I marked up the recipe with the modifications and gave it a try.

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups bread flour
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
[Using whole wheat wasn't actually one of the modifications, but I bought some white whole wheat and I've been wanting to try it out. It's supposed to have the physical properties of whole wheat without the flavor. Now that I write it out, it doesn't sound like such a great thing.]
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
3 Tablespoons malt syrup
[I found malt syrup at Whole Foods. It's not particularly sweet so I was generous with it and cut back on the water to compensate.]
1 Tablespoon salt
1 cups hot water

water for boiling
1 1/2 Tablespoons malt syrup

various toppings


I preheated the oven to 425 degrees--a little hotter than last time--hoping to get the bagels a little crispier.

I mixed the dry ingredients and then carefully added the wet just until the dough came together to make sure the dough stayed stiff. That made the 10 minutes of kneading a bit of a chore, but since I used the whole wheat, it needed the full time to get the gluten worked up.

Once it formed a tight ball, I put it in an oiled bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and let it rise. Some recipes only give it twenty minutes for this step, but since it's for flavor production I figured I should give it a full hour.

I punched down the dough and cut it up into pieces for the individual bagels. I decided to make eight 2-ounce mini-bagels this time so I can have a whole one for a snack. I tried rolling out a rope and making a loop to form them, but the dough isn't at all sticky and I was a bit over-generous in the oiling earlier so I have troubles there. Instead I gave each piece of dough a good knead to work out bubbles, let them rest a couple minutes, and then flattened them, poked a hole in the middle and formed them into a bagely shape. I think that worked well enough in deflating them, but they really don't want to be reshaped at this point they're not nice well-formed loops.

Once they were shaped, I boiled them in the malt-water for a full three minutes with a flip in the middle.


When I took them out of the water I skipped the egg wash and just dunked them into a bowl of mixed sesame seeds, poppy seeds, kosher salt and diced onions. It made kind of an ugly mess so I changed to sprinkling the mix over the top for the later ones.

They sat for ten minutes and then into a 425 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. I think I took them out at 22.

The toppings didn't work quite the way I had hoped. There's too much and since the onions aren't on top, they didn't brown. Well, I can always scrape off the excess.



The outside of the bagels have the appropriate chew, but they aren't crisp. I think that's because the excess toppings insulated it and because I skipped the egg wash, but another few minutes in the oven wouldn't have hurt.



The texture inside is dense, but soft. They seem more like soft pretzels than bagels. (Using too much salt in the toppings only increases the resemblance.)

The recipe for soft pretzels is almost exactly the same as for bagels. I wonder what the key difference is. Maybe the texture inside is like that because my misshapen bagels had lots of vents. A proper bagel's interior should be sealed inside a thick skin created by the boiling. But so should a proper pretzel. The fact that I made these bagels so small might have had some effect since pretzels are almost always thinner than bagels. This is going to require some more experimentation to find out. Any-which-way, it still beats light and fluffy.

The whole wheat must have had some effect too, although there's nothing in the texture and only the slightest hint in the flavor you can point to as recognizably whole wheat. There is a hint of the malt there, too. Malt also shows up in a lot of soft pretzel recipes and I think it struck me as part of the pretzely flavor. Maybe I've had more properly made pretzels than bagels in my life so that's where my memory of malt goes.



Overall, these aren't bad beyond the trouble with the toppings. There's some good texture on the outside at least and the flavor is about right, but they aren't quite what I was aiming at either. I think the first batch turned out better overall. I'll have to change some elements back to see if I can bring out the best of both versions.

After that, though, I see some bagel recipes that use a sponge for extra flavor. It's not clear, but that may be the Montreal style which I've been curious about. That's going on the to-make list.

Parisian bagels

I wish I could remember how I came across this recipe. I wasn't looking for bagel recipes; I can't imagine I'd settle on a Parisian one if I was. It comes from a radio show I've never heard of, adapted from cookbook I've never heard of, from a recipe by someone I've never heard of. Perhaps some blog I have heard of pointed to one of those three?

Anyway, if you're interested in any of those here's a link. And here's the recipe. It looks complicated, but it was actually pretty simple and quick as bread recipes go. The cook's notes are from the original. Everything went so smoothly, I don't think I have any notes myself.

"JO GOLDENBERG’S PARISIAN BAGELS

Now, how elegant is this?! A French bagel! Actually, in Paris there is a huge Jewish community (more than half of all of France’s 500,000+ Jews live in Paris) and the MOST famous bagel restaurant-deli is that of Jo Goldenberg at 7 rue de Rosiers. It’s a Paris institution less than a mile from the famous Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Our listener Caryn started all of this (be sure to check out her picture – and her bagels’ picture - on the “Look at Us” page – menu at left) and the subject proved so interesting that the recipe is our feature this week. It turns out to be lots of fun to make bagels – and not difficult at all.

To make things even easier, the making-a-rope technique for shaping bagels, used by professional bakers, is NOT the one we’re using here. It’s very difficult to make that rope of dough perfectly even in thickness, as it wraps around the baker’s open hand, being rolled back and forth expertly. For the home baker, this recipe simply calls for making a ball of dough, then pushing a hole through the center – you’ll see, below. There are also some Cook’s Notes, and a few suggestions for variations (this recipe is for plain water bagels) in case you’d like to make onion or sesame or poppy seed or other flavors….variations follow the recipe…more of the "fine points" will be discussed on the show.


MAKES 10 LARGE BAGELS

3 1/2 cups (approximately), bread flour [or substitute all-purpose flour]
2 packages, dry yeast
3 tablespoons, sugar
1 tablespoon, salt
1 1/2 cups, hot water (120-130 degrees)
3 quarts water
1 1/2 tablespoons, barley malt syrup [or substitute sugar in the same amount]
1 egg white – beaten with 1 teaspoon, water
topping of choice, if any (see Variations, below)
cornmeal for sprinkling on the baking sheet


Make the dough: In a mixing bowl (or the bowl of an electric mixer) measure 3 cups of the flour and stir in all the remaining dry ingredients. Pour in the hot water, and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon (or with the flat paddle attachment of the electric mixer at low speed) and beat for about 2 minutes.

Add the remaining half-cup of flour, a little at a time, stirring by hand. When the batter becomes thick and heavy, attach the mixer’s dough hook (if using) or lift the dough from the bowl and place it on a lightly floured work surface for kneading by hand.

Knead the dough: Knead the dough at medium low speed on the mixer – or by hand (using a push, turn and fold motion, energetically) for about 10 minutes – or until the dough is firm and solid when pinched with the fingers. Add flour as needed if the dough is sticky in your hands, or sticks to the sides of the mixing bowl (if using electric mixer).

First Rising: When dough is kneaded enough, place it in an oiled mixing bowl, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and set aside at room temperature until it has doubled in volume – about 1 hour.

Prepare water bath: Near the end of this rising time, bring the 3 quarts of water to the boil in a large saucepan. Add the malt syrup or sugar; then, reduce the heat and leave the water just barely moving – at a slow simmer.

Shape the bagels: When the dough has doubled in volume, turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface and punch it down with extended fingers to remove excess gas.

Divide the dough into 10 pieces (each will weigh about 3-4 ounces). [I halved the recipe and made my bagels on the small side so I ended up with six.] Shape each piece into a ball. Allow the balls to stand and relax for a few minutes – then flatten each one with the palm of your hand.

With your thumb, press deep into the center of the bagel and tear the depression open with your fingers. Pull the hole open, pull it down over a finger and smooth the rough edges. It should look like a bagel! Form all of the bagels and place them on your work surface.

Second Rising: Cover the shaped bagels with wax paper or parchment paper. Leave them at room temperature just until the dough has risen slightly – about 10 minutes (this is called a “half proof”). [Cook’s Note: If the bagels are allowed to rise too much during this “second rise” – they will not sink when put in the simmering water; but, if that should happen, just pretend that they DID sink – and cook them for the same 1 minute as described below. The difference will be unnoticeable to most anyone.]

Prepare the baking sheet: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. [Cook’s Note: If using a convection oven, reduce the heat by 50 degrees.] Grease a baking sheet with shortening (or use a non-stick baking sheet, or line a baking sheet with “Silpat” or similar material) and sprinkle the baking sheet with cornmeal.

Water-bathing the bagels: Into the gently simmering water prepared earlier, slip one bagel at a time (use a large skimmer, and gently lower them into the water). Simmer only 2 or 3 bagels at a time – do not crowd the pan. The bagels will sink and then rise again after a few seconds. Simmer gently for one minute, turning each bagel over once during that time. Lift each bagel out of the water with the skimmer, drain briefly on a towel, then place each bagel on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat until all bagels are simmered, drained and on the baking sheet. [Cook’s Note: Thanks to the malt syrup or the sugar that was added to the simmering water, the bagels will be shiny as they come from the water.]

Baking the bagels: If toppings are desired, (see “Variations” below) now is the time to add them, by sprinkling the desired topping over the bagels. Brush each bagel lightly with the egg-white-water mixture first, then sprinkle the topping if desired – or leave unadorned, for water bagels.

Place the baking sheet on the middle rack of the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes. When the bagel tops are a light brown, turn them over to complete baking. This turning-over step will keep the bagels in a rounded shape, instead of their being flat on the bottom. When brown and shiny, remove the finished bagels from the oven.
Place the bagels on a metal rack to cool.

Variations:
Toppings may include: coarse salt, shredded onion, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, caraway seeds, or other flavors of your choice. Sprinkle toppings over before baking bagels, as described above. [I made sesame, salt, onion and everything bagels. All out of poppy seeds.]

Another tasty treat: slice each bagel crosswise into 4 thin rounds. Return the rounds to the oven and bake the rounds until dry throughout, and just beginning to brown – about 20 minutes. Remove the rounds from the oven, immediately butter them and salt lightly – then return to the oven for about 5 minutes until the butter is absorbed by the rounds. Serve hot or at room temperature as a snack.

Recipe adapted from Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads (Simon and Schuster)"

And here they are:


The outsides looks great, but inside, that's not quite what the inside of a bagel should look like. After taking a bite, the crust has just the right crunch then chew you want in a bagel. My jaw hurts which means either I did this right (This is Jewish food: all joy brings pain.) or I should stop putting off my dental check-up. On the other hand, the inside just squishes to nothing. That part needs work. The flavors are good though, even through the onion and sesame, cream cheese and tomato (no lox today; making the bagels was a spur of the moment decision and you have to travel to find good lox.) you can taste the distinctive warm, hearty and slightly sweet bagel flavor. Not bad at all for a first try.

I do want to improve the insides, though, so a little more research is in order. ... Done. Here's what I've learned:
* First, my dough wasn't stiff enough. A good bagel dough should be very hard to work. That should give a denser crumb in the final product.
* Second, my bagels were puffy because the simplified forming method gets out fewer air bubbles than the traditional method of rolling them out into a rope and then joining the ends.
* Third, the recipe I used had a particularly short poaching time in the sugar water. An extra minute or two would cook the outer surface more, increasing its chewiness and keep it tight so the dough couldn't rise in the oven, further reducing its puffiness.
* Fourth, a more traditional recipe uses malt syrup or powder instead of sugar, both in the dough and in the water. I'm not entirely clear how that effects the result, but the bagels I had in New York certainly used it so it couldn't hurt if I'm trying to match them.
* Fifth, a slightly higher baking temperature will get them crunchier, and
* Sixth, mixing some of the toppings into the dough isn't a bad idea.

I wonder how much of the differences are Paris vs. New York and how much from over-simplification for the home cook (something you really need to look out for if don't know where your recipes are coming from). They all seem to be easy fixes for next time, although I may have to go to a brewing supply store for the malt. Still, even without those refinements, these bagels are easily the best I've had in Miami. Of course, fresh from the oven counts for a lot. The real test will be how they freeze, defrost and toast. [And the result: eh. Not bad; could be better.]