2009 Was A Very Good Year

If the number of posts is any indication, 2009 was wonderful for blogging. It was also the year of bread, so much so that in March I created a new blog Bread Baker's Dog, to take up some of the extra bread recipes I wanted to blog about...why?...because I wanted Feeding My Enthusiasms to reflect ALL my enthusiasms, not just my passion for bread baking. 

Many of my recipes this year came from cookbooks, often tweaked a bit as I like to do. Do you have favorite cookbooks or do most (or all) of your recipes come from the internet...or hand written recipes from a recipe box...or a combination?

Another great thing about 2009 was that my loved ones realized that cooking and baking were taking a more prominent place in my life, so they gifted me with culinary laurel leaf wreaths, shears to chop herbs, foldable colander,  a good scale, a digital thermometer and more.

A lot of thought goes into each post and then more time writing and editing photographs and putting it all together, then proofing (usually but not always) the post before posting. Dishes that we have as part of our normal life get posted once then are not posted later, so what you see are in some ways extra things that I want to make. Every now and then I will repeat something, but I try to keep it fresh and new.

One of the Christmas cookies that we have every year has been posted a number of time or has been linked to. It is Sweetie's favorite because of all the molasses. It's the Swedish Ginger Cookie recipe and I love it, too because it's a roll-out and cut-out cookie that is easy to roll, keeps it's shape when baked, and is delicious. I usually decorate the cookies with white Royal Icing, which contrasts nicely with the brown cookie, and maybe a few cinnamon red hots for a pop of color.

In 2009, towards the end of the year, I did my first post with suggestions for Thanksgiving, including links. I had a number of positive comments, plus a comment from No Handle on making a brined turkey with great gravy. Since it has been just a bit over a year since he died, it was a jolt to read the comment...I had forgotten that he had written. Rest in peace, Brother No Handle.

The fall also brought a few good recipes for squash including a fairy cake that is really a kind of pumpkin muffin, a two squash soup, and pumpkin pie made with sugar pie pumpkins. Truly there is something special about using locally grown fresh squash to make these fall treats.

October included two French treats that I have made again over the years...macarons and French yogurt cake. Both are fairly simple, but the results are wonderful. If you get a chance, follow the links and try them yourself.

Of course October is also my blog birthday. Here is what I wrote for the third birthday:

"One of the best things lately to start in the fall is this blog. Three years ago I barely knew what a blog was and there were far fewer food blogs.

I checked back to the brave folks who were the first few to comment here. The first four or five no longer are blogging. I guess it didn't match their needs in the same way that it matched mine:

I love the fact that I have 'met' people from all over the world through blogging...and that we are mostly the same...food obsessed :)

I love that blogging brings out my creative side. I get to play with food. I borrow lots and lots of cookbooks from the library and sometimes even bring the librarians samples of things I've baked to enjoy, especially of the sweets. I love that my photography has improved. I love that I have come under the sway of the magic of bread baking, seduced by all things baking, inspired by combinations of flour and butter and sugar and seeds and grains. Most of all I have been amazed that I can sit down at the computer, find words to fill the Blogger template time after time, and create something that other people actually read and look at and are occasionally inspired by.

As Sweetie would say (in jest), "Not bad...for a girl." He is actually my biggest fan and promoter, telling perfect strangers that they have to go visit my blog. Sometimes they even accept the URL from him.

I love hitting the Publish Post button and I especially enjoy the comments...and wish that there were more. You CAN comment anonamously as Natasha did recently. If you give me hints and I already know you I can even figure out who you are...a sort of puzzle. However, even if you never comment, I do hope you will continue to visit now and then. The place to click on to comment is usually at the bottom of the post. Try it...you might enjoy it.

Believe it or not, I don't have a clue how many people actually visit this blog. I could find out easily, but I guess I'm not really interested. Recently one of my sisters assured me that many family members stop by and read to see what I am up to. I suspect that there are a few folks beyond immediate family...and I welcome you all!

This is the 360th post. I think that comes out to an average of something like a post every third day."

One of the advantages of having this be a blog that includes a few things other than food is that I can get creative. In late September one post included a Land of St. Honore' story, a recipe for vol au vents as part of a Daring Baker challenge, and a photo and explanation of a set of model World War II ships that Sweetie made and created a display case for, too. My Mom had asked for a photo (we talked every week on the phone on Saturdays) and I knew that she would be looking for the St. Honore' story, so I included the photo. I suspect that I might have had more followers if I had stuck strictly to baking or baking sweets, but what fun is that?

September also brought the first Index for the blog. Since there were at least 300 recipes by now, that was a good thing. Now there are well over a thousand recipes and a multi-page Index. I still need to migrate the old index recipes into the new one, but maybe that will happen in January when the weather is usually rainy and it's a good time to hunker down inside.

Although I usually try to write out recipes so they are like those in cookbooks, sometimes I just write them out as I would if I were giving you a recipe on a piece of scratch paper...in narrative form. A good example (and a delicious recipe) is for bruchetta, a great recipe for harvest time.

This is the year that I began baking with the Bread Baking Babes, my longest running blog group. I still bake bread with them and post it on or after the 16th of the month. First I baked as a Buddy and eventually was invited to join. The group kept the number at 12, so I had to wait until there was an opening. These days we hardly ever get Buddies and our numbers have been reduced, but the challenges are still fun and educational and the results are usually delicious! The first bread was in February for the Babes first anniversary. It was 5-Grain Bread with Walnuts by Carol Field, an artisan loaf (or two) that was really hearty and delicious. 

Another fun, new thing this year was that I did a journal of our first trip to Ireland, with most of the posts being in June even though the trip was in May. These included little maps to show where we were. There are also lots and lots of photos and usually a recipe at the end, often not really related to the Ireland story. Here is the first one (and it has a recipe for Irish Brown Bread) that is set up as a real journal, although there were a few I wrote while there that can be found in late May...you can follow the rest on your own.

Sometimes there is a recipe that becomes a favorite with you, dear readers. One of these is Spinach Rice Casserole from the Moosewood cookbook of 1977, so it really is an oldie but goodie. It can be a main dish since it has milk, eggs and cheese along with brown or wild rice and spinach, but it can also be a great side dish if you have someone in your family, like I do, who really likes some meat with their meal.

Another milestone from 2009 is one that from 2020 looks almost quaint. In January Barack Obama became our President and many were very hopeful that we had turned a corner in our nation and could put racism behind us. We celebrated at my work and arrived early enough to watch the inauguration on TV...and I baked and brought bagels for part of the celebration. They are a lot of work, but so delicious. As it turned out, racism just went underground and grew in the dark. People of color knew that the election had not changed much for them, but it took the rest of us a long time to realize that so much of it was systemic that it still blights our nation. That needs to change.

I'm going to end with a pair of recipes that are perfect for this time of year. I just picked the first two Meyer lemons from the shrub by the barn. I have quite a few this year, so look for more lemon recipes in the next few months. The one is a link to a post that has both gingerbread and my Mom's clear Lemon Sauce. They go really well together!

If you have read this far, you are a trooper! 2009 had 135 posts, most of them with recipes, so feel free to wander around and discover the ones I didn't include in this round-up.

Baking Bagels in Quarantine with a Buddy

I have a good friend and neighbor who used to live in New York City and he loves the bagels you can get there. It's going to be a while before he gets back there again, so we talked about baking bagels together...apart. He found some great videos on YouTube and made up some baking planks with burlap (which I'd never heard of but makes them more authentic and really helps the toppings stay on, too). Here is a photo of them after I'd flipped the bagels off them and onto the baking stone. He really did a nice job!

The hard part was finding yeast and bread flour. That finally happened this week so yesterday he dropped off a couple of the planks for me (literally left them on the porch and left, then texted me), and we agreed to make the dough yesterday and have it sit in the fridge overnight, then bake in the morning.

So today was bake day. I took the dough out of the fridge as soon as I got up to allow it to warm up and start rising again. At 8 am G texted a photo of his already shaped bagels.... and we began. I was obviously behind since my dough was still in the rising container, but then I read that he planned on letting his rise for an hour, so I was able to catch up since mine only were supposed to rise for 15-20 minutes. We were using different recipes.

There are two ways to shape bagels, by creating dough balls and then poking a hole in the middle and stretching the dough out from there to create the center hole, or by making a dough snake and then wrapping it around you hand to create a circle, then sealing the two ends together. G did the first method and I did one that way...which turned into a blimp once baked, so obviously I didn't create a big enough hole! The one on the right in the photo below is the one where I poked a hole in the middle and shaped it. Clearly I didn't make a big enough hole!

I used the snake method and Sweetie took a video of me doing it to send to G. Don't you just love smart phones? I was hoping to include it here, but it's too large a file for my email. I should look into other ways to get it off my phone and to my computer. It shows me rolling the dough into a snake and wrapping it around my hand, slipping it off and sealing the ends together. You can see the results below, except for the one in the foreground, which is the blimp one.

I probably used too much yeast because the shaped bagels were ready in less than 15 minutes. I'd been preheating the oven for about 45 minutes (an hour is recommended), had the baking stone in place, the baking planks had soaked overnight in a clean sink and were drained, and a large pot of water was boiling on the stove. While the bagels were rising I had put out thee shallow bowls. One held coarse sea salt, one white sesame seeds, and one a mixture 'everything' that had onion, poppy and sesame seeds and salt. I added a little molasses to the boiling water since I didn't have any barley malt syrup, and we were ready to go!

The boiling only takes a minute...30 seconds per side or less...and then I put one side of the bagel right into the salt, then, salt side down, onto the board. I repeated the process with the 'everything', then slid the plank into the oven on top of the pizza stone. Set the timer for three minutes and boiled the other three bagels, dipping one in sesame, one in 'everything' and left the hand-made hole one plain. These went, topping side down, on the second plank and into the oven. The first plank bagels were ready to turn out onto the pizza stone...which puts them topping side up...and the plank was put on the counter. After another three minutes the bagels on the second plank were turned out onto the stone. Now it was seven more minutes of baking for the first set and ten minutes for the second set. The advantage to only making part of the recipe is that 5 bagels only takes a few minutes for all to be baking. Here's how they looked with the first two coming out of the oven.

G and I kept checking back with each other. His actually looked better than mine...not so puffy...but he had some problem with burnt bottoms. It never hurts to check on the bagels close to the finish of baking time to make sure they aren't burning. If you are doing batches that means you can turn your oven down 25 degrees F or so. If they aren't burning, just keep going.

The hard part was waiting until the bagels had cooled a bit before slicing, toasting, and eating them. They smelled great and tasted even better once toasted, buttered and enjoyed.

This is a great project to do during quarantine.  There a lot of steps, but just take your time. Start making the dough on Friday and by 9 or 10 Saturday morning you will have fresh, delicious bagels.

If you don't have burlap for planks, and clean boards, too, you can bake them right on the baking stone. If you don't have a baking stone, just use a greased baking sheet. You can go on YouTube as G did to look at different techniques and recipes. It's fun. G is going to try a different recipe and slightly lower oven temp. and see how that changes things. This is art as well as food, so perfect isn't really the point, enjoyment is. Happy Baking!

Real Jewish Purist's Bagels
A variation of Real Honest Jewish Purist's Bagels
Recipe Quantity: Fifteen (15) large, plain, Kosher bagels

Ingredients:6-8 cups bread (high-gluten) flour
3 teaspoons Active dry baking yeast
6 tablespoons granulated white sugar or light honey or 3 tablespoons molasses
2 teaspoons salt
3 cups hot water
a bit of vegetable oil
1 gallon water
3-5 tablespoons malt syrup or sugar
a few handfuls of cornmeal if not using baking planks
toppings

Equipment:
large mixing bowl
wire whisk
measuring cups and spoons
wooden mixing spoon
butter knife or baker's dough blade
clean, dry surface for kneading
warm, but not hot, place to set dough to rise
large stockpot
slotted spoon
baking planks: clean 2x4s, 14-inches long, with a strip of burlap on top of each, stapled at the sides
 or 2 baking sheets
or cornmeal and a bakers peel
3 clean, dry kitchen towels or a wire cooling rack

How You Do It:Step 1- Proof Yeast: Pour three cups of hot water into the mixing bowl. The water should be hot, but not so hot that you can't bear to put your fingers in it for several seconds at a time. Add the sugar or honey and stir it with your fingers (a good way to make sure the water is not too hot) or with a wire whisk to dissolve. Sprinkle the yeast over the surface of the water, and stir to dissolve.

Wait about ten minutes for the yeast to begin to revive and grow. Skipping this step could result in your trying to make bagels with dead yeast, which results in bagels so hard and potentially dangerous that they are banned under the terms of the Geneva Convention. You will know that the yeast is okay if it begins to foam and exude a sweetish, slightly beery smell.

Step 2- Make Dough: At this point, add about three cups of flour as well as the 2 tsp of salt to the water and yeast and begin mixing it in. Some people subscribe to the theory that it is easier to tell what's going on with the dough if you use your hands rather than a spoon to mix things into the dough, but others prefer the less physically direct spoon. As an advocate of the bare-knuckles school of baking, I proffer the following advice: clip your fingernails, take off your rings and wristwatch, and wash your hands thoroughly to the elbows, like a surgeon. Then you may dive into the dough with impunity. I generally use my right hand to mix, so that my left is free to add flour and other ingredients and to hold the bowl steady. Left-handed people might find that the reverse works better for them. Having one hand clean and free to perform various tasks works best.

When you have incorporated the first three cups of lour, the dough should begin to become thick-ish. Add more flour, a half-cup or so at a time, and mix each addition thoroughly before adding more flour. As the dough gets thicker, add less and less flour at a time.

Step 3- Knead Dough: Soon you will begin to knead it by hand (if you're using your hands to mix the dough in the first place, this segue is hardly noticeable). If you have a big enough and shallow enough bowl, use it as the kneading bowl, otherwise use that clean, dry, flat counter top or tabletop mentioned in the "Equipment" list above. Sprinkle your work surface or bowl with a handful of flour, put your dough on top, and start kneading. Add bits of flour if necessary to keep the dough from sticking (to your hands, to the bowl or counter top, etc....). Soon you should have a nice stiff dough. It will be quite elastic, but heavy and stiffer than a normal bread dough. Do not make it too dry, however... it should still give easily and stretch easily without tearing.

Step 4- Let Dough Rise: Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, and cover with plastic wrap, a shower cap, or a clean kitchen towel, dampened somewhat by getting it wet and then wringing it out thoroughly. If you swish the dough around in the bowl, you can get the whole ball of dough covered with a very thin film of oil, which will keep it from drying out.

Place the bowl with the dough in it in a dry, warm (but not hot) place, free from drafts. Allow it to rise until doubled in volume. Some people try to accelerate rising by putting the dough in the oven, where the pilot lights keep the temperature slightly elevated. If it's cold in your kitchen, you can try this, but remember to leave the oven door open or it may become too hot and begin to kill the yeast and cook the dough. An ambient temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit (25 Centigrades) is ideal for rising dough. You can also let the dough sit in the fridge overnight as I did, covered with a clean shower cap (or use plastic wrap). Remove it an hour or so before shaping time to allow it to warm and rise a bit more. Soak the planks overnight in water in a clean sink. Drain while the water boils (Step 6)
Step 5- Pre-heat Oven: Begin to preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Allow about an hour.

Step 6- Prepare Water and Toppings for Bagels: While the dough is rising, fill your stockpot with about a gallon of water and set it on the fire to boil. When it reaches a boil, add the malt syrup (or molasses) or sugar and reduce the heat so that the water just barely simmers; the surface of the water should hardly move. Put toppings in shallow bowls. Set drained planks near the bowls, or, if using a baking sheet, place greased baking sheet near bowls. If baking directly on baking stone, place a peel near bowls and lightly sprinkle cornmeal on peel.

Step 7- Form Bagels: Once the dough has risen, turn it onto your work surface, punch it down, and divide immediately into as many hunks as you want to make bagels. For this recipe, you will probably end up with about 15 bagels, so you will divide the dough into 15 roughly even-sized hunks.
Begin forming the bagels. There are two schools of thought on this. One method of bagel formation involves shaping the dough into a rough sphere, then poking a hole through the middle with a finger and then pulling at the dough around the hole to make the bagel. This is the hole-centric method. The dough-centric method involves making a long cylindrical "snake" of dough and wrapping it around your hand into a loop and mashing the ends together. Whatever you like to do is fine. DO NOT, however, give in to the temptation of using a doughnut or cookie cutter to shape your bagels. This will push them out of the realm of Jewish Bagel Authenticity and give them a distinctly Protestant air. The bagels will not be perfectly shaped. They will not be symmetrical. This is normal. This is okay. Enjoy the diversity. Just like snowflakes, no two genuine bagels are exactly alike.

Step 8- Half Proof and Boil Bagels: Once the bagels are formed, let them sit for about 10 minutes. They will begin to rise slightly. Ideally, they will rise by about one-fourth volume... a technique called "half-proofing" the dough. At the end of the half-proofing, drop the bagels into the simmering water one by one. You don't want to crowd them, and so there should only be two or three bagels simmering at any given time. The bagels should sink first, then gracefully float to the top of the simmering water.  Let the bagel simmer for about  thirty seconds, then turn them over with a skimmer or a slotted spoon. Simmer another thirty seconds, and then lift the bagels out of the water and dip them right away into the toppings, if using. The bagels should be pretty and shiny, thanks to the malt syrup, molasses or sugar in the boiling water.

Step 9- Bake Bagels: As the bagels finish boiling, dip them in the topping and put them, topping side down on the planks with burlap side up.  Put them in the oven, right on top of the baking stone. If you don't have the plank, put the topped bagels topping side up on peel and then onto the baking stone, or on a greased baking sheet...which goes into the oven. Let them bake for 3 minutes on the plank, then flip over onto the baking stone...toppings will be right side up...then set timer for 10 minutes. If not using planks, set timer when bagels first go into the oven for 13 minutes. You can leave them in longer if they are not browned. Check bottoms, too, and turn over if getting too brown. You want them to be a dark golden brown so that they are fully baked.

Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks, or on a dry clean towels if you have no racks. Do not attempt to cut them until they are cool... hot bagels slice abominably and you'll end up with a wadded mass of bagel pulp. We didn't really wait long enough, so they didn't slice cleanly, but didn't wad to much. Sweetie has a really hard time smelling baked bread and waiting until it is cool.

Bagels with the Bread Baking Babes

Before we get to the bagels (other than the photo), I want to thank the wonderful Bread Baking Babes for asking me to join them quite a few years ago. The group is usually about a dozen bakers and every month a different Babe chooses the recipe that we bake. Fortunately creativity is encouraged so some months it's almost as if we each had a different recipe! A number of the Babes originally found each other through the Daring Bakers group. At first the Daring Bakers were small enough that you could get around to each bakers post,  but when it grew and grew and grew the sheer size got in the way of the fellowship. The BBBs have that fellowship and we have fun baking different breads together.

In June 2007 the Daring Bakers made bagels. I baked some on my own to have at work when President Obama was inaugurated. It was still pretty early here on the West coast when the actual inauguration happened, so we had a Breakfast party of celebration at work. That's your Food Memory for today.

The party at work was probably the last time that I made bagels and I've never made them with a dough like the one that our Kitchen of the Month, Baking Soda of Bake My Day gave us. It has a lot of eggs and some vegetable oil and make a dough that is a joy to work with. Really tasty, too, once baked. I only made 1/4 of the dough into bagels. Might try the bagel loaf today or tomorrow with some of the rest of the dough, now that 've had a good night's sleep. The previous night I had stayed up late watching The British Baking Show episodes and then rose very early to bake birthday cookies for a friend at the gym. We leave for the gym at 8:30 am, so you get the idea.

I did stray from the recipe a bit (how unusual!!) by reducing the yeast to one packet and even that might have been a little bit too much yeast. I also reduced the sugar and salt in the dough to one tablespoon each. I also was very tired and doing this bake after dinner and with too little sleep (which is why I only made 6), so I didn't read the directions carefully enough. I didn't boil four of the bagels long enough so they became rounds in the oven instead of flatter bagels. Two of them I did boil long enough and they looked as they should, so when you make them be sure to boil for three minutes on the second side. Was so tired that I didn't even take a photo of the boiling.

You can top these as you like, or even make flavor variations that Baking Soda includes at the end of the recipe. I used a mixture of seeds for most of them and tried a different seed mixture that included pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries for a couple, but the cranberries burned during baking, so I don't recommend that. Of course the two that had burnt cranberries were the two that were shaped correctly. Just not my night.

You'll surely want to be a Buddy this month, these bagels are so delicious! Just make the bagels or loaves (see Baking Soda's post for the loaves instructions), then email your link ( or email your photo and bit about your experience if you don't have a blog) to bakemyday *at*gmail *dot*com and please add as your subject 'BBBuddy'. Baking Soda will send you a Buddy badge. Deadline? December 1.

Be sure also to check out the efforts of the other Bread Baking Babes.

Egg Bagels
(Makes about 30 bagels or 3 9x5" loaves)

Ingredients

1 or 2 large russet potato (ab 3/4 pound total) (we only use the potato water!)
2.1/2 cups water
2 tbs active dry yeast * (I used 18 grams)
1.1/2 tbs sugar plus more for the boiling water as needed**
1.1/2 tbs salt plus more for the boiling water as needed
7-7.1/2 cups unbleached ap flour or bread flour (I used 980 grams)
1/4 cup corn oil
4 large eggs

Egg Glaze: 1 egg beaten with 1 tbs water

Sesame/poppy seeds for garnish

* yeast. Beth is a very enthusiastic yeast user. Please use your bread sense and adjust if needed ;-)
** I think bagels need some sweet in the dough. But maybe you feel this is a bit much. That's fine! Use less!

1.             Peel potatoes and cut into large chunks, boil in 2.1/2 cups water until tender. Drain but reserve2 cups of the potato water! Let cool until lukewarm. Use potato for other purposes.

2.             In a large bowl using a whisk or the work bowl of a heavy duty electric mixer fitted wth the paddle attachment combine yeast, 1.1/2 tbs sugar, 1.1/2 tbs salt and 2 cups of the flour. Add potato water and oil. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add 1 cup of the flour and the eggs and beat again for 2 minutes. Add the remaining flour, ½ cup at a time until a soft dough forms that just clears the side of the bowl. Switch to a wooden spoon when necessary if mixing by hand.

3.             Turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and springy, about 5 minutes. Only dust with flour to prevent sticking. By machine: switch from the paddle to the dough hook and knead for 4-5 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and springy.

4.             Place dough in a greased deep container. Turn once to coat the dough, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in bulk 1-1.1/2 hours.

5.             To form bagels: gently deflate the dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into quarters. Then each quarter into 6-8 equal portions. Shape each portion into a smooth round. Flatten with your palm and poke a floured finger through the middle of the ball. Stretch the hole with your finger to make it about 1 inch in diameter. Spin the dough around your finger. The hole will shrink slightly when you stop. Form all bagels.
They will need no further rise at this point.

6.             20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Grease or parchment line 2 baking sheets. Meanwhile bring a large pot (3-4 quarts) of water to a boil. Add 2tbs of salt or sugar to the boiling water depending on the flavor you want the crust to have. Reduce the heat to maintain a gentle low boil.

7.             With a slotted spatula, lower 3-4 bagels at a time into the gently boiling water. They will drop to the bottom and then rise to the surface. As they come to the surface, turn each bagel and boil it 3 minutes on the other side. This goes very quickly, if you are making the entire batch of bagels, use a second pot of boiling water.

8.             Remove the bagels from the boiling water with a slotted spoon and place each 1 inch apart on the baking sheets. When all the bagels have been boiled, brush with the glaze and sprinkle with the seeds if desired. Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until deep golden. Transfer the bagels immediately to a cooling rack.

9.             To form and bake a bagel loaf: In step 5  turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 3 equal portions. For into rectangular loaves and place in 3 greased 9-by-5 loaf pan. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until just level with the tops of the pans. (These loaves will rise a lot in the oven) about 40 minutes.

10.          20 minutes before baking preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C)

Brush the tops with egg glaze and using kitchen shears, carefully snip the top of the dough about ½” deep at 2” intervals down the center of the loaf. Bake in the center of the preheated oven until crusty, golden brown and the top sounds hollow when tapped with your finger, 40-45 minutes. Transfer the loaves to a cooling rack. Cool completely before slicing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

# Make these whole wheat by subbing 3 cups for an equal portion of the unbleached flour

# Orange Oatmeal
sub 1.1/2 cup oatmeal for an equal portion of the unbleached flour, add 1 tbsp grated orange zest and 2 tbsp honey

# Cinnamon Raisin
  Increase the sugar to 1/4 cup. Add 1 tbs ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground mace or nutmeg and 1/2 tsp ground cardamom with the flour in the initial mixing. Add 1.1/2 cups golden or dark raisins during mixing. This dough may be formed into a loaf and topped with sesame seeds.

# Pumpernickel Bagels
Substitute 2 cups medium or dark rye flour for an equal portion of the unbleached flour. Add 1/4 cup molasses, 1 tbs unsweetened cocoa and 1 tbs powdered instant coffee. Glaze the tops and sprinkle with caraway seeds.

# Onion bagels
Saute 1 finely chopped onion in 4 tbs butter until softened. Halfway through baking glaxe the bagel tops and spread 2 tsp of onion mixture over each bagel. Finish baking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Elizabeth made these weight conversions:

1 or 2 large russet potato (ab 3/4 pound total) [340 grams]
2.1/2 cups water [500 grams]
2 tbs active dry yeast * [24 grams]
1.1/2 tbs sugar plus more as needed** [18.75 grams]
7-7.1/2 cups unbleached ap flour or bread flour [875 - 938 grams]
1/4 cup corn oil [56 grams]
4 large eggs [200 grams]

Happy Inauguration Day!

Today, no matter where we hail from, no matter our politics, if you are a U.S. citizen, we are all Americans and have cause to welcome a new president. If you aren't a U.S. citizen, I hope that you wish our country and our president well. The world is a smallish place in many ways. Today gives me hope that we can make it a good place to be for as many people as possible.

Last night I made the bagels that were part of the Daring Bakers challenge in June 2007 so many months ago. The sourdough starter was the base and those bagels were shared early this morning (8:30 am our time) at work as we gathered to watch the inauguration ceremonies. There was some good cream cheese, some smoked salmon, some red onions and sliced tomatoes, some butter and some cherry jam (from Traverse City Michigan), some Prosecco and oranges and a wonderful cake by Hil.

The cake was symbolic: pineapple to honor our new President's birthplace in Hawaii, some molasses in the gingerbread to remind us of the rum, sugar, slaves triangle of the colonial days, and it was an upside down cake...with hope that President Obama will turn our country right side up again.

It was a lot warmer in our little office than in Washington, D.C., but the cheers and applause were just as enthusiastic.

Since I used to live in the D.C. area and have been on that mall many times, I was blown away by the sheer numbers of people gathered from all over on this historic day. It also made me proud to see that the turning over of power was not only peaceful, but cordial, with proper respect being paid to Mr. Bush for his service to the U.S., even if many didn't appreciate his notion of what that service should be.

Happy Inauguration Day!

Real Honest Jewish Purist's Bagels
Daring Bakers Challenge #7: June 2007
Hosts: Jenny (All Things Edible) and Freya (Writing at the Kitchen Table)Post Date: Wednesday, June 27th
Allowed Modifications:
Topping of your choice, savory recommended, for the outside of the bagels only. No added ingredients or flavours inside the bagels.
Filling or spread of your choice for the outside of the bagel. (i.e. flavoured cream cheese or peanut butter)
Recipe ingredient exception allowed only if allergy or an ingredient not available or cost prohibitive in your region
Recipe Quantity: Fifteen (15) large, plain, Kosher bagels
Ingredients:
6-8 cups bread (high-gluten) flour
4 tablespoons dry baking yeast
6 tablespoons granulated white sugar or light honey (clover honey is good)
2 teaspoons salt
3 cups hot water
a bit of vegetable oil
1 gallon water
3-5 tablespoons malt syrup or sugar
a few handfuls of cornmeal
Equipment:
large mixing bowl
wire whisk
measuring cups and spoons
wooden mixing spoon
butter knife or baker's dough blade
clean, dry surface for kneading
3 clean, dry kitchen towels
warm, but not hot, place to set dough to rise
large stockpot
slotted spoon
2 baking sheets

How You Do It:
Step 1- Proof Yeast: Pour three cups of hot water into the mixing bowl. The water should be hot, but not so hot that you can't bear to put your fingers in it for several seconds at a time. Add the sugar or honey and stir it with your fingers (a good way to make sure the water is not too hot) or with a wire whisk to dissolve. Sprinkle the yeast over the surface of the water, and stir to dissolve.
Wait about ten minutes for the yeast to begin to revive and grow. Skipping this step could result in your trying to make bagels with dead yeast, which results in bagels so hard and potentially dangerous that they are banned under the terms of the Geneva Convention. You will know that the yeast is okay if it begins to foam and exude a sweetish, slightly beery smell.

Step 2- Make Dough: At this point, add about three cups of flour as well as the 2 tsp of salt to the water and yeast and begin mixing it in. Some people subscribe to the theory that it is easier to tell what's going on with the dough if you use your hands rather than a spoon to mix things into the dough, but others prefer the less physically direct spoon. As an advocate of the bare-knuckles school of baking, I proffer the following advice: clip your fingernails, take off your rings and wristwatch, and wash your hands thoroughly to the elbows, like a surgeon. Then you may dive into the dough with impunity. I generally use my right hand to mix, so that my left is free to add flour and other ingredients and to hold the bowl steady. Left-handed people might find that the reverse works better for them. Having one hand clean and free to perform various tasks works best.
When you have incorporated the first three cups of lour, the dough should begin to become thick-ish. Add more flour, a half-cup or so at a time, and mix each addition thoroughly before adding more flour. As the dough gets thicker, add less and less flour at a time.

Step 3- Knead Dough: Soon you will begin to knead it by hand (if you're using your hands to mix the dough in the first place, this segue is hardly noticeable). If you have a big enough and shallow enough bowl, use it as the kneading bowl, otherwise use that clean, dry, flat counter top or tabletop mentioned in the "Equipment" list above. Sprinkle your work surface or bowl with a handful of flour, put your dough on top, and start kneading. Add bits of flour if necessary to keep the dough from sticking (to your hands, to the bowl or counter top, etc....). Soon you should have a nice stiff dough. It will be quite elastic, but heavy and stiffer than a normal bread dough. Do not make it too dry, however... it should still give easily and stretch easily without tearing.

Step 4- Let Dough Rise: Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, and cover with one of your clean kitchen towels, dampened somewhat by getting it wet and then wringing it out thoroughly. If you swish the dough around in the bowl, you can get the whole ball of dough covered with a very thin film of oil, which will keep it from drying out.
Place the bowl with the dough in it in a dry, warm (but not hot) place, free from drafts. Allow it to rise until doubled in volume. Some people try to accelerate rising by putting the dough in the oven, where the pilot lights keep the temperature slightly elevated. If it's cold in your kitchen, you can try this, but remember to leave the oven door open or it may become too hot and begin to kill the yeast and cook the dough. An ambient temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit (25 Centigrades) is ideal for rising dough.

Step 5- Prepare Water for Bagels: While the dough is rising, fill your stockpot with about a gallon of water and set it on the fire to boil. When it reaches a boil, add the malt syrup or sugar and reduce the heat so that the water just barely simmers; the surface of the water should hardly move.

Step 6- Form Bagels: Once the dough has risen, turn it onto your work surface, punch it down, and divide immediately into as many hunks as you want to make bagels. For this recipe, you will probably end up with about 15 bagels, so you will divide the dough into 15 roughly even-sized hunks. Begin forming the bagels. There are two schools of thought on this. One method of bagel formation involves shaping the dough into a rough sphere, then poking a hole through the middle with a finger and then pulling at the dough around the hole to make the bagel. This is the hole-centric method. The dough-centric method involves making a long cylindrical "snake" of dough and wrapping it around your hand into a loop and mashing the ends together. Whatever you like to do is fine. DO NOT, however, give in to the temptation of using a doughnut or cookie cutter to shape your bagels. This will push them out of the realm of Jewish Bagel Authenticity and give them a distinctly Protestant air. The bagels will not be perfectly shaped. They will not be symmetrical. This is normal. This is okay. Enjoy the diversity. Just like snowflakes, no two genuine bagels are exactly alike.

Step 7- Pre-heat Oven: Begin to preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 8- Half Proof and Boil Bagels: Once the bagels are formed, let them sit for about 10 minutes. They will begin to rise slightly. Ideally, they will rise by about one-fourth volume... a technique called "half-proofing" the dough. At the end of the half-proofing, drop the bagels into the simmering water one by one. You don't want to crowd them, and so there should only be two or three bagels simmering at any given time. The bagels should sink first, then gracefully float to the top of the simmering water. If they float, it's not a big deal, but it does mean that you'll have a somewhat more bready (and less bagely) texture. Let the bagel simmer for about three minutes, then turn them over with a skimmer or a slotted spoon. Simmer another three minutes, and then lift the bagels out of the water and set them on a clean kitchen towel that has been spread on the counter top for this purpose. The bagels should be pretty and shiny, thanks to the malt syrup or sugar in the boiling water.

Step 9- Bake Bagels: Once all the bagels have been boiled, prepare your baking sheets by sprinkling them with cornmeal. Then arrange the bagels on the prepared baking sheets and put them in the oven. Let them bake for about 25 minutes, then remove from the oven, turn them over and put them back in the oven to finish baking for about ten minutes more. This will help to prevent flat-bottomed bagels.

Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks, or on a dry clean towels if you have no racks. Do not attempt to cut them until they are cool... hot bagels slice abominably and you'll end up with a wadded mass of bagel pulp. Don't do it.

How To Customize Outside of Bagels: After boiling but before baking, brush the bagels with a wash made of 1 egg white and 3 tablespoons ice water beaten together. Sprinkle with the topping of your choice: poppy, sesame, or caraway seeds, toasted onion or raw garlic bits, salt or whatever you like. Just remember that bagels are essentially a savory baked good, not a sweet one, and so things like fruit and sweet spices are really rather out of place.

Don't You Dare Take My Last Bagel !

Well, if you really want it, I guess I could give you half. It’s hard to share the last of something this delicious.

Bagels are a classic food. “The bagel, in its peripatetic history, has moved from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the delis of the United States” says Carolina Rodriguez while introducing this recipe from a friend of hers.

For the Daring Baker’s June Challenge, we are making Real Honest Jewish Purist’s Bagels. The recipe is from Johanne Blank and is found at jewish-food.org. Since it is a purist’s version, it involves yeasted dough that, after a first rising, shaping, and second rising, is boiled, then baked. The result is a densely textured donut shaped piece of bread with a nice chewy bite and yeasty flavor. It is perfect just sliced in half and toasted, then slathered with butter or cream cheese.


Often the bagels are sprinkled before baking with seeds like poppy seeds or sesame seeds, or with sea salt or onions. I chose to go with sesame seeds and sea salt, with one left plain to see how that was. They were all tasty.

For lots of other, imaginative variations, check out the other Daring Bakers blogs. Thanks go to Jenny and Freya for choosing such a delicious challenge.

There is little that is difficult about this recipe. If the yeast proofs then it’s just a matter of stirring in the flour until a stiff dough forms. I used the full amount of flour called for, plus a little extra when I did the shaping. I used all-purpose unbleached bread flour, not regular flour. Since bagels are bread, it makes sense, doesn't it?

The yeast does the work during the two risings and also during the boiling and baking. The part that allows for some creativity is how you shape the bagel. Since it is a donut shape, you can poke a hole up through the middle of the dough and then work the dough out from the hole, or you can roll the piece of dough into a snake and then put the ends together, leaving a hole in the middle. I tried both. In the end I couldn’t really tell which method I had use for any particular bagel.

What surprised me was how puffy the bagels got while boiling. None of mind sank first as the recipe said they would, but the final result was dense and chewy bagels, so I guess its O.K.
This is kind of a fun recipe because you can mix the dough with your hand and then use your hands to knead the dough,

then for the shaping. Working with yeast dough always feels good…it’s elastic and you can almost feel the little yeasties growing in the dough. You don’t let out as much aggression as you would from beating a butter block with a rolling pin as was done last month to make puff pastry, but kneading dough is very soothing and somehow contemplative.

This recipe below makes at least 15 bagels, but you can make half a batch. I did and now I wish that I had made the full recipe. These bagels are head and shoulders above anything you might buy at the supermarket. Try it…you’ll see.

Real Honest Jewish Purist's Bagels
Daring Bakers Challenge #7: June 2007
Hosts: Jenny (All Things Edible) and Freya (Writing at the Kitchen Table)
Recipe Quantity: Fifteen (15) large, plain, Kosher bagels

Ingredients:
6-8 cups bread (high-gluten) flour
4 tablespoons dry baking yeast
6 tablespoons granulated white sugar or light honey (clover honey is good)
2 teaspoons salt
3 cups hot water
a bit of vegetable oil
1 gallon water
3-5 tablespoons malt syrup or sugar
a few handfuls of cornmeal

Equipment:
large mixing bowl
wire whisk
measuring cups and spoons
wooden mixing spoon
butter knife or baker's dough blade
clean, dry surface for kneading
3 clean, dry kitchen towels
warm, but not hot, place to set dough to rise
large stockpot
slotted spoon
2 baking sheets

How You Do It:
Step 1- Proof Yeast: Pour three cups of hot water into the mixing bowl. The water should be hot, but not so hot that you can't bear to put your fingers in it for several seconds at a time. Add the sugar or honey and stir it with your fingers (a good way to make sure the water is not too hot) or with a wire whisk to dissolve. Sprinkle the yeast over the surface of the water, and stir to dissolve.

Wait about ten minutes for the yeast to begin to revive and grow. Skipping this step could result in your trying to make bagels with dead yeast, which results in bagels so hard and potentially dangerous that they are banned under the terms of the Geneva Convention. You will know that the yeast is okay if it begins to foam and exude a sweetish, slightly beery smell.

Step 2- Make Dough: At this point, add about three cups of flour as well as the 2 tsp of salt to the water and yeast and begin mixing it in. Some people subscribe to the theory that it is easier to tell what's going on with the dough if you use your hands rather than a spoon to mix things into the dough, but others prefer the less physically direct spoon. As an advocate of the bare-knuckles school of baking, I proffer the following advice: clip your fingernails, take off your rings and wristwatch, and wash your hands thoroughly to the elbows, like a surgeon. Then you may dive into the dough with impunity. I generally use my right hand to mix, so that my left is free to add flour and other ingredients and to hold the bowl steady. Left-handed people might find that the reverse works better for them. Having one hand clean and free to perform various tasks works best.

When you have incorporated the first three cups of lour, the dough should begin to become thick-ish. Add more flour, a half-cup or so at a time, and mix each addition thoroughly before adding more flour. As the dough gets thicker, add less and less flour at a time.

Step 3- Knead Dough: Soon you will begin to knead it by hand (if you're using your hands to mix the dough in the first place, this segue is hardly noticeable). If you have a big enough and shallow enough bowl, use it as the kneading bowl, otherwise use that clean, dry, flat counter top or tabletop mentioned in the "Equipment" list above. Sprinkle your work surface or bowl with a handful of flour, put your dough on top, and start kneading. Add bits of flour if necessary to keep the dough from sticking (to your hands, to the bowl or counter top, etc....). Soon you should have a nice stiff dough. It will be quite elastic, but heavy and stiffer than a normal bread dough. Do not make it too dry, however... it should still give easily and stretch easily without tearing.

Step 4- Let Dough Rise: Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, and cover with one of your clean kitchen towels, dampened somewhat by getting it wet and then wringing it out thoroughly. If you swish the dough around in the bowl, you can get the whole ball of dough covered with a very thin film of oil, which will keep it from drying out.

Place the bowl with the dough in it in a dry, warm (but not hot) place, free from drafts. Allow it to rise until doubled in volume. Some people try to accelerate rising by putting the dough in the oven, where the pilot lights keep the temperature slightly elevated. If it's cold in your kitchen, you can try this, but remember to leave the oven door open or it may become too hot and begin to kill the yeast and cook the dough. An ambient temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit (25 Centigrades) is ideal for rising dough.

Step 5- Prepare Water for Bagels: While the dough is rising, fill your stockpot with about a gallon of water and set it on the fire to boil. When it reaches a boil, add the malt syrup or sugar and reduce the heat so that the water just barely simmers; the surface of the water should hardly move.

Step 6- Form Bagels: Once the dough has risen, turn it onto your work surface, punch it down, and divide immediately into as many hunks as you want to make bagels. For this recipe, you will probably end up with about 15 bagels, so you will divide the dough into 15 roughly even-sized hunks.
Begin forming the bagels. There are two schools of thought on this. One method of bagel formation involves shaping the dough into a rough sphere, then poking a hole through the middle with a finger and then pulling at the dough around the hole to make the bagel. This is the hole-centric method. The dough-centric method involves making a long cylindrical "snake" of dough and wrapping it around your hand into a loop and mashing the ends together. Whatever you like to do is fine. DO NOT, however, give in to the temptation of using a doughnut or cookie cutter to shape your bagels. This will push them out of the realm of Jewish Bagel Authenticity and give them a distinctly Protestant air. The bagels will not be perfectly shaped. They will not be symmetrical. This is normal. This is okay. Enjoy the diversity. Just like snowflakes, no two genuine bagels are exactly alike.

Step 7- Pre-heat Oven: Begin to preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 8- Half Proof and Boil Bagels: Once the bagels are formed, let them sit for about 10 minutes. They will begin to rise slightly. Ideally, they will rise by about one-fourth volume... a technique called "half-proofing" the dough. At the end of the half-proofing, drop the bagels into the simmering water one by one. You don't want to crowd them, and so there should only be two or three bagels simmering at any given time. The bagels should sink first, then gracefully float to the top of the simmering water. If they float, it's not a big deal, but it does mean that you'll have a somewhat more bready (and less bagely) texture. Let the bagel simmer for about three minutes, then turn them over with a skimmer or a slotted spoon. Simmer another three minutes, and then lift the bagels out of the water and set them on a clean kitchen towel that has been spread on the counter top for this purpose. The bagels should be pretty and shiny, thanks to the malt syrup or sugar in the boiling water.

Step 9- Bake Bagels: Once all the bagels have been boiled, prepare your baking sheets by sprinkling them with cornmeal. Then arrange the bagels on the prepared baking sheets and put them in the oven. Let them bake for about 25 minutes, then remove from the oven, turn them over and put them back in the oven to finish baking for about ten minutes more. This will help to prevent flat-bottomed bagels.

Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks, or on a dry clean towels if you have no racks. Do not attempt to cut them until they are cool... hot bagels slice abominably and you'll end up with a wadded mass of bagel pulp. Don't do it.

How To Customize Outside of Bagels: After boiling but before baking, brush the bagels with a wash made of 1 egg white and 3 tablespoons ice water beaten together. Sprinkle with the topping of your choice: poppy, sesame, or caraway seeds, toasted onion or raw garlic bits, salt or whatever you like. Just remember that bagels are essentially a savory baked good, not a sweet one, and so things like fruit and sweet spices are really rather out of place.