Not as hard as I had thought

There are some things in the world of cooking and baking that I had always assumed were just too hard to do. There are some food items that we just assume are best left to the professionals. One of them, was bagel baking. When ever you read about baking bagels there is all sorts of discussion about the right water and how hard it is to make a good bagel. I learned that it actually isn’t all that hard to produce a credible bagel.

When we were in Israel, we spent one night at Hedva’s house. When we came into her beautiful home late in the afternoon, Hedva set us to work rolling bagels out from the dough that was prepared in a big bowl. Hedva is a big believer in the evils of white flour, so she made a whole wheat dough. We rolled out snakes of dough and formed them into bagels. Hedva boiled the bagels to a count of ten . She ten topped the bagels with a zaatar and olive oil mix. She then baked the bagels in a hot oven. They were delicious, but not exactly bagels.

I realized that the process was far simpler than I had thought. The day we got home I mixed up a bread dough.

My bread dough

2 c water heated for 1 minute in a microwave

add to large bowl

add 1 + 1/4 tsp dry yeast to water

ass 1 tsp flour to help feed the yeast

allow to sit for 5 minutes

add 1 T salt

1 tsp sugar

4 T dried gluten

while stirring, add as much flour as the dough can hold – after the dough gats thick mix with your hand. knead until the dough is fairly stiff..but not dry. knead in the bowl until the mixture is coherent and is no longer a sloppy mess.

cover with a towel and allow to rise for 2 hours

If you want to make bagels, this is how you proceed. Put a pot of water up to boil. I baked my bagels at 425, I’m still experimenting with the right temperature, 400 might be better. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

flour a surface to hold formed bagels. Punch down the dough and knead. if needed, add enough flour so the dough isn’t sticky. Pull off finger sized pieces of dough. Roughly roll into a snake , twist and form into a circle. Then set on the floured surface. Twisting the dough just makes for a prettier bagel. Form several bagels as you wait for the water to boil.

Once the water boils expand the hole in your bagels a bit.The bagels will rise as they are waiting to be boiled and the hole you previously made will close up. Then, toss three or four formed raw bagels into the boiling water. Let them boil until they rise to the top of the water ( like one does with a dumpling or with gnocci).They can even stay in for a few moments longer. The bagels will grow in the water. The outer surface will cook slightly which will make them shiny after they are baked.

Fish the boiled bagels out of the water with a spatula or slotted spoon and place on prepared baking sheet. Fill the baking sheet with boiled bagels and bake until golden brown.

I made two batches yesterday. The whole process, from beginning to end, takes less than three hours. I realized that boiling the bagels both speeds the rising process as well as cutting the baking time. Making the bagels, I realized that bagels were probably invented to both save on fuel and on time. Yes, I will make them again.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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