Levy's Bagels

Sunday, September 24, 2006

I know, I know, I KNOW that I should always read these recipes carefully and preferably at least twice. There is often helpful, if not vital, information tucked into the middle of a paragraph. I was merrily weighing the flour when, after I'd mixed in all the flour, I realized that I wasn't supposed to add it all at once, and that the last two tablespoons were to be added only if you wanted a heavier, denser bagel "which some people like." (Implying, I think, that only people of lesser taste like it that way). Well, nothing much that can be done about it, so I continued.
After I added the tablespoon and a half of softened butter, I read Rose's comment at the end: butter will make the bagel have a softer and lighter crumb; personally, she says, I prefer them without butter. Drat! I wanted to make these just exactly like Rose likes them. Okay, I've screwed up twice, and I'm not even at the hard part yet.
Bagel dough can spend a lot of time in the refrigerator, which is good, because we had house guests this weekend, and we also went to the new Tyrone Guthrie theater on Friday night, and to see the Minnesota Opera's La Donna del Lago on Saturday night, leaving me only Sunday to shape, boil, and bake the bagels.
Bagels were on my list of scary breads, but they really aren't that difficult to make. The shaping gets a little tricky, and a couple of my attempts look like they were made by someone who said, "I could do that with my eyes closed." And they just looked weird when I took them out of the boiling water (with molasses and baking soda added). But after they came out of the oven, they looked gorgeous--except for the misshapen ones--with a lovely golden brown color.
We dug into them almost immediately. Because of my braces, I had to cut them in pieces before I could eat them, giving a Baby's First Bagel quality to the eating experience, but even so they were quite delicious. I was hoping they'd be good, but also hoping in a way that they wouldn't be noticeably superior to the bagels from the Bruegger's shop that's only a few blocks away, so that I would be able to tell myself it wasn't worth the trouble to make them myself. That is not the case, however. After two bites, Jim asked me if they were so difficult to make that I wouldn't be serving them routinely. When I choked at the word "routinely," he amended it to "maybe when we have company for breakfast?" I think I could handle that.

We ate the bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon and/or cream cheese and raspberry preserves. The smoked salmon was the Minnesota kind, not New York lox, but it was good nonetheless. Good enough for a repeat. Next year.

Kheema Paratha

Sunday, September 17, 2006
First of all, the name of this bread makes me think of Hakuna Matata, so that everything I think about making it, I start humming that song, which is one of those Disney songs that's hard to get out of your head, like It's a Small World After All, which is the very worst. So it had that strike against it.
Then, just reading the directions made me tired. The dough itself is easy--just mix up half whole wheat, half white flour, add a little powdered dry milk, salt, and water, and let it rest. No yeast, no sourdough, no nothing. But then you have to cut it in eight pieces, roll each piece out in a circle, brush it with clarified butter, fold it, brush it again with clarified butter, then roll it out again, put the ground meat filling (which you've already made, and which has about 42 ingredients) on it, top it with another rolled out circle, crimp the edges, turn it over, roll it out again, then cook it in a special pan, which I don't have.

I just used my griddle that I bought to bake English muffins and crumpets, and it worked just fine.

And, by the way, while the dough was resting and the ground meat filling was cooking, you make a Yemenite green sauce that has lots of cilantro, garlic, hot peppers, and olive oil.
At one point, I seriously thought I was still going to be rolling out these paratha at midnight, which would be two days in a row of late-night bread making. But, like so many things, once you get in the rhythm of it, it goes much more smoothly.
They turned out to be crazily delicious. They're a little like pita and a little like naan, but not really like either one. The ground meat filling is satisfyingly spicy, but it's flavorful, not just hot. The Yemenite green sauce, a sort of middle-Eastern pesto, is the kind of sauce that makes you think of other foods it would go with and improve.
I made four of the paratha. Jim ate two for dinner, and I ate one. I'm zealously guarding the leftover one, which I plan to have for lunch tomorrow. I feel that I'm getting fanatically food-centered. Last night I went to bed thinking about eating pumpernickel bread for breakfast, and tonight I'm going to bed thinking of kheema paratha for lunch.

Sourdough Pumpernickel Bread

Saturday, September 16, 2006
I was in a bad mood when I started this bread, which is not a good idea because I'm pretty sure the bread dough knows when you're not treating it with appropriate respect. I believe this even though it's nonsense. First of all, the bread calls for caramel powder. Usually Rose is very good about telling you where and how to obtain products that are hard to get. But "caramel powder" is just in the list of ingredients as though it's an everyday staple. I had no idea where caramel powder would even be in a grocery store, and none of the three grocery stores I tried had it or had even heard of it.
In all fairness to Rose, after I began this diatribe, I decided I'd better go make sure that she didn't say anything about caramel powder, so I turned to the other, non-sourdough pumpernickel bread recipe, which I also haven't made, and saw a note to go to page 556, "Coloring Agents." There it says that you can use either liquid caramel, which is like burned sugar, or caramel powder, and that this is the secret to a dark, dark pumpernickel. Shit. Well, I still don't know where to get it, and this puts me in a worse mood because I know that my sourdough pumpernickel is not going to be perfect.
Also, I was annoyed because I could only find coarse-ground pumpernickel meal, instead of pumpernickel flour, which would presumably be a finer grind. This irritates me because I think it will make the bread too grainy. And I also wish I didn't have to throw away so much of my sourdough starter, which is supple and lovely after I've fed it a few times. Not to mention the fact that the bread takes six to eight hours to rise, plus another four to five after it's shaped, which means it won't be ready for cocktail hour today, even though I started on this bread yesterday morning before I went to work. In fact, I don't think it will be ready for a midnight snack. I love the sourdough breads that I've made, but I'm still not sure they're worth all the trouble.
Later.....While waiting for the bread to rise, I decide to order some better pumpernickel flour from The Baker's Catalogue. After I add it to my cart, a list of things I might want to buy since I'm buying pumpernickel flour pops up. The first thing on the list is caramel powder. I order that too and try to look on the bright side--that my second loaf of pumpernickel bread is going to be perfect.
Still later.....What a great loaf of bread! Never mind that it didn't have any powdered caramel--it's still a dark, authentic-looking pumpernickel. The crust is very crisp, and the glaze (cornstarch and water) makes it exceptionally shiny. Never mind that the flour was actually meal--it wasn't too crunchy or too mealy. And it was ready for a midnight snack. It was a great midnight snack, (Jim said it's one of his favorite breads so far), and I'm looking forward to having a few slices for breakfast, along with a bowl of yogurt with slices of fresh Michigan peaches.

Cranberry-Banana-Walnut Quick Bread

Saturday, September 9, 2006
After I turned off the oven to crisp the bread sticks, see Previous Entry), I turned it back on to make my second bread.
We had a wedding reception to go to at 3:00, and after all the fussing with the bread sticks, there was no time to waste. Fortunately, this was a quick bread that lived up to its name. I'd already chopped and toasted the walnuts and cut the cranberries, so I only had to toss everything in the mixing bowl and give it a few minutes to blend.
This is not just an ordinary quick bread--it's probably the best one I've ever tasted. I've had banana-nut and cranberry and cranberry-nut, but this is the first time I've tried all three of them. It's a wonderful combination. The banana mellows the cranberries, and the nuts complement both. (Luckily for me, I've decided that nuts pose no problem for my braces).
The bread was not only done before we left, but we also had time to eat a slice, still warm, before we left for the wedding reception, where there was plenty more food, but you never want to drive somewhere on an empty stomach. That's my theory, anyway.

Spicy Herbed Bread Sticks

Saturday, September 9, 2006
I'm getting so close to my goal that my daughter Elizabeth, who has always thought my recent obsession with bread was a little odd, decided that she wanted to fly home for the weekend to help me make a few loaves of bread. I told her I was planning to bake two this week and that she could choose them, so she picked breadsticks and cranberry-walnut bread.
Although Liz said she wanted to nice relaxing weekend, her idea of relaxing is different from that of normal people (that is to say, me). So we picked her up at the airport, went out for lunch, went to the Mall of America to buy shoes and a dress, get manicures, and go to a Minnesota Twins-Detroit Tigers game (Go Twins!), so we didn't have time to start on the bread until 11:00 Friday night. Fortunately, the breadstick dough was quite easy to mix up, so I did that and put it in the refrigerator.
Saturday morning, we started working on the bread sticks. These are grissini, very thin, crisp Italian breadsticks. I told her that Rose's instructions were to shape them in a pasta maker, but I balked at buying a new pasta maker just for this occasion. She said, "Mom, we have a pasta maker--don't you remember? You gave me a Hearthsong cooking club membership when I was about 12, and one month I got pasta stuff." I said, "I don't remember, and I'm sure we don't still have it." She said, "I'm sure we do since you people never throw anything out."
Damn! She went through a drawer and found the pasta maker.

I said, "Oh, I think I'll just shape them by hand. I think that will be quicker." She said, "The directions say to use the pasta maker, and that's what I'm going to do." Damn! Hers were perfect--beautiful, long, and thin, and mine were short and stubby. I turned to the pasta maker after it became clear that this method worked much better.

We baked them all, and then turned the oven off, and put them back in the oven for about an hour to let them get super-crisp. This worked beautifully, and in the end we had fabulous, flavorful grissini--with pepper, parmesan, fresh herbs and Tabasco.

Chocolate Almond Swirl Kugelhopf

Monday, September 4, 2006

A three-day weekend may mean sleeping late or going on picnics or walking around the lake to some people. To me, it means a chance to bake three breads. My Labor Day project was chocolate almond swirl kugelhopf.
To bake this bread, I needed either a kugelhopf pan or a rose bundt cake pan. For some reason, the frugal side of my nature, which is not usually very visible, came out for this pan purchase. I balked at the idea of paying full price for a decorative cake pan that I would might never use again, so I went to E-bay. Even on E-bay, the Nordicware rose bundt pans were not cheap, but eventually I got one for $10. NIB, as they say. And even from a non-smoking household.
When it arrived, I saw why it was so cheap. It was new and it was Nordicware, all right, but it wasn't the nice heavy cast aluminum pan; it was lightweight, thin-as-paper aluminum. So light that the rose petals and rose leaves weren't well defined, and my rose-shaped bread came out looking more like blob-shaped bread. It wasn't a case of false advertising, either, just of bad reading.


Still, although the uncut bread didn't look like much, once I started slicing it, it turned beautiful! The chocolate schmear(I like saying schmear almost as much as saying LaCloche), made with cake crumbs, almond paste, egg, butter, corn syrup, and chocolate, spread on the rolled-out dough easily, and I rolled the dough up without any mishaps. I even had time for a quick trip to Target while waiting for the dough to rise.
I promised myself I would eat only ONE PIECE of this very rich, chocolatey, delicious bread. But I ate two. And the night's not over yet. I plan to take the rest of this bread into work tomorrow, though, so temptation will be removed.

Raisin Pecan Bread

Sunday, September 3, 2006

According to Rose's notes on this bread, it's her husband's very favorite, of all the different breads she makes, and I'm sure she's made even more than 82. I'm not sure it was Jim's favorite, but it may well have been in the top five. I loved it too. Fortunately, I decided that I wasn't going to let my braces keep me from eating nuts and raisins, although, strictly speaking, they're both on the verboten list.
Although this isn't a cinnamon-raisin bread (which I already made, back in the distant past), I kept thinking that I smelled cinnamon while it was baking. It must be that the aroma of raisins calls up the thought of cinnamon. It didn't need any cinnamon, or anything else, though, because it's packed with nuts and raisins. So packed that I had trouble keeping them all in the bread dough because they kept wanting to rise to the surface and then make their way out onto the counter.
This bread, like the last few I've made, is supposed to be baked in an oblong LaCloche. Why didn't I just buy one? I have the round LaCloche, and I figured that was enough. Clearly, however, if I wanted to achieve perfection, I should just have ordered still another baking accoutrement. Even without being baked in LaCloche, this is still a fine-looking loaf of bread, but I know that somehow LaCloche makes it a more beautiful golden brown. Besides, I like saying LaCloche.

Mantovana Olive Oil Bread

Saturday, September 2, 2006

After this bread, I have only 21 breads left to bake to meet my goal. Only 21! Just a year ago, the idea of baking 21 kinds of bread in one year would have seemed laughable to me. And now I'm thinking that 21 seems like a breeze. As I get closer to the end of this project, Jim is sounding more and more wistful. He says things like, "It would be so sad not to have bread every weekend" and "Doesn't having fresh bread seem so homey?" I think he's afraid that once I make my way to the end of the bread list, I'll pack everything away and start buying Wonder Bread.
This olive oil bread is definitely not Wonder Bread, although it is quite wondrous. I just finished eating the last piece of sourdough wheat bread with seeds, and this bread's ingredients are similar to that one, but the final product is so much different. Despite all the seeds and the whole wheat flour, the olive oil bread is more tender, even delicate. I'm not sure if it's the olive oil that makes the difference, but the differences are pronounced.
Rose recommends serving this with Italian cured meats, so I went to Broders Italian Deli and got Prosciutto de Parma, Tuscan Salami, Mortadella, gorgonzola dolce latte, pecorino, and roasted red peppers stuffed with goat cheese. It made a lovely platter, and our mid-afternoon snack turned into dinner.

(The pecorino was made with milk from black sheep. It was one of many things that remind me of my sister Roberta, who died much too young. She would have loved the idea of black sheep cheese!) We drank it with some delicious rose wine--like most everyone else, we have scorned rose wine for many years. Now, like most everyone else, we're learning to love it again. Is there anything that won't come back in fashion eventually?

Sacaduros

Sunday, August 27, 2006
Two kinds of dinner rolls in one week! Sarah came over for dinner for these, and she gave them her usual enthusiastic review. She also took four of them home for breakfast, so we don't have our regular problem of too much bread to eat. (Although I do have some leftover wheat sourdough with seeds and a few leftover butter-dipped dinner rolls in the freezer).
I have to say that I had some problems making these rolls, even with the step-by-step drawings in the book. You pat pieces of dough in a circle, then you put a little piece of butter in the center, along with a sprinkle of fleur de sel. Then you pull out two sides and fold them over in the middle and you do the same thing with the other sides. Then you take some other sides and do the same thing, and you may or may not do it a fourth time. The directions say you do it a total of three times, and the drawings say four. I chose four, because otherwise there would still be one side that never got any attention.
Then you plunk them in a pan of flour, top side down, and when you're done with that, you put them top side up, with a lot of flour still on top, on a baking sheet. And then you bake them. Some of the little flaps in the middle are supposed to sort of open up, which they didn't exactly do, even though I was careful not to seal them too tight.
But never mind! These are exceedingly delicious. They're crusty on the outside, and soft on the inside, with that wonderful little burst of salty, buttery flavor when you bite into the middle. They look kind of like giant Mexican wedding cakes when you take them out of the oven, but they would certainly surprise you if that's what you were expecting.
I didn't want them too salty, so I just put a small pinch. Next time I would use a bigger pinch, because they could have had more and still not have been too salty.
Still, although these are spectacular rolls, unlike the butter-dipped rolls, I wouldn't use them for a Big Dinner because they're very labor intensive at about the same time you might be trying to make the gravy.

Walnut Onion Bread

Saturday, August 26, 2006
I thought this would be just like the walnut fougasse that I made months ago, with the addition of onions. But it's a totally different bread. It's crusty, but very light, with a fine crumb. I'd kept the walnut oil that I bought for the fougasse in the refrigerator, and it was still good. (Rose warns that walnut oil turns rancid in minutes if it's not refrigerated). The baking onions and walnuts make it smell wonderfully good while it's baking.

You are supposed to bake this bread in a long, rather than a round, LaCloche. But I only have one LaCloche, so my bread is round instead of torpedo-shaped. Although I'm trying to follow the directions exactly, I figured that the shape change wouldn't make a huge difference in the final product. The onions and walnuts may not get mixed as well in a round loaf, but it was good enough.
We invited some neighbors over for bread, cheese, wine and grapes, and they were suitably impressed with the bread. I did learn that I should never let Jim cut bread, even with a serrated knife. He put all of his weight on this delicate loaf of bread while he was slicing it, and the beautiful crumb was squished. Fortunately, I'd already been able to eat my fill before it turned into a dough ball. (Because it is just all about me).

Butter-Dipped Dinner Rolls

Wednesday, August 23, 2006
If you are invited to your in-laws' house, or your future in-laws' house, or just the house of someone you wanted to impress, and you're supposed to provide bread or rolls, this is what you should take. These rolls will impress and delight everyone, and people will tell you that they are just like the rolls their grandmother used to make, which probably means they're even better than grandmother's rolls because in the mind of the person who is making that proclamation, grandma's dinner rolls have become an idealized, perfected version. One caveat, though: if your mother-in-law (or father-in-law) or a future in-law should happen to pride her- or himself on their own dinner rolls, you should not bring these because you will only upstage the aforementioned in-law, who will never love you the way you deserve to be loved.
I had some friends over for dinner tonight, and I made these rolls for them. Because it was the middle of the week, and because I figured if I was serving homemade rolls I could take the easy route on the rest of the dinner, I also served a deli roast chicken and a salad made from lots of different colors and sizes of heirloom tomatoes, capers, goat cheese, fresh basil, olive oil and sherry vinegar. For dessert, I bought a blackberry lemon tart. It was a fabulous middle-of-the-week dinner, and the guests were suitably impressed by the rolls. (And they did, indeed, compare them to grandma's famous dinner rolls).
The recipe is very simple and basic. The only confusing part was that it was unclear whether the recipe made 12 rolls or 24. At the top of the recipe, it said "makes 12." In the directions, however, it said to cut the dough in half, and cut each half into 12 rolls. That would be 24, if my lightning-quick math skills are correct. I compromised by making 15, and putting them in a 9 x 13 pan, instead of an 8 x 8 pan. That seemed to work just fine. Probably you could also make either 12 or 24, depending on whether you wanted larger or smaller rolls.
I plan to make these my standard Big Meal (e.g., Thanksgiving) dinner roll, and I hope that if I ever have grandchildren, they will remember them fondly.

Potato Flatbread Pizza

Sunday, August 20, 2006
If you like good food, I urge you to go buy The Bread Bibleand make this pizza. If you like good food and you don't like to cook, I urge you to find someone who does and wheedle them into baking this pizza for you. It's that good.
The dough is just made with flour, a little sugar, yeast, salt, butter, and mashed potato. I had some baby new potatoes, and I cooked those and mashed them; I'd recommend using Idaho potatoes because the new ones got a little gummy when I mashed them, although it didn't seem to make much difference in the finished product. After the dough rises, you shape it onto a pizza pan and let it rise a little more. The topping I used was sauteed red onions and spinach, sauteed mushrooms with garlic, crushed red pepper, and rosemary, and bacon bits. After the pizza baked for about five minutes, you take it out, put dollops of mascarpone cheese on it, then the toppings, and bake for another five minutes. Then, when it's done, strew on some grated parmesan.
The crust is both tender and crispy, and it's by far the most delicious pizza dough I've ever had, which may be because it actually has flavor and isn't just a cardboard-like base for a bunch of good things. My favorite pizzas have always been the cracker-thin pizzas available as appetizers at Auriga
Those are very, very good, but they're not as good as the pizzas now available from my very own kitchen. I'm thinking that from now on, Sunday nights are pizza nights at the Wolf house.

Sweet Potato Loaf

Saturday, August 19, 2006
I wish I'd taken a picture of the dough for this bread. It was so beautiful and airy, with little flecks of orange sweet potato. Not surprisingly, the bread is also beautiful and airy,with little flecks of sweet potato. In fact, if you didn't want to call this sweet potato bread, you could call it light-as-air bread, or, if you were feeling even more fulsome, you could call it golden light-as-air bread. It was the perfect bread for my poor, sore, newly-braced teeth to gnaw on too--a very moist, light bread with no seeds or caramel, like last week's breads.
This bread has a wonderful flavor, and an even better smell. It doesn't taste overwhelmingly like sweet potato, but when it's baking, the combined smell of yeasty bread and roasting sweet potato is enough to make you want to dig into the loaf before it's even done. And, in fact, only the end slice was photogenic enough for the blog because I sliced it almost as soon as it came out of the oven, resulting in some mooshy, but still delectable, pieces of bread.

Chocolate Sticky Buns

Sunday, August 13, 2006
Well, these are amazing. Imagine a tender, buttery brioche dough. Further imagine a lush chocolate ganache, a caramel sauce strewn with walnuts, and, just to gild the lily, handfuls of chocolate chips. Pretend that you never had the slightest interest in losing ten pounds. I just can't say enough about these rolls, except that it's a very good thing that I made these three days before I got my braces put on instead of three days after, because I don't think I could have smelled them and passed them up, and I would not get a gold star for being a good patient if I were to try to eat them with brand-new metal bands on my teeth.
First, let me say that I will never doubt Rose's helpful hints again. (Well, I probably will, just like my daughters ignore my helpful hints and then regret it. Or so they say). This is a very sticky dough, and after you've spread the ganache and the chocolate chips on it and rolled it up, it's even stickier. Rose suggests using dental floss to cut the roll into twelve pieces. When I made the caramel sticky buns, back in January, I thought the dental floss was a silly idea, and I used a knife. It was okay, but the dental floss trick is very slick, although it did make me feel a little like I was using a garrotte on someone.
The only slight imperfection was that the caramel was harder, and less gooey, than I'd hoped. It was surpassingly delicious, but not really caramel-y. I guess I should have used a candy thermometer, but, since I don't like making things that require candy thermometers, I pretended that this didn't.
When writing the previous entry, the sourdough wheat bread with seeds, I was in the process of deciding whether to go the bread-cheese-wine route or the cappuccino-chocolate sticky bun route for our mid-afternoon snack. I had to opt for the sticky buns because they are so wonderful. However, I had a small one.

Sourdough Wheat Bread with Seeds

Sunday, August 13, 2006
I'm getting braces this Wednesday, so I decided that I'd better make a few breads that I might not be able to eat post-braces, including bread with seeds and caramel rolls. I'm afraid that I don't have a better reason for getting braces than vanity. I always thought that when I was done paying for my daughters' extensive orthodontic work, I'd get my own teeth fixed. I woke up one day and decided that if I'm going to do it, I'd better do it now. I'm not sure whether it's crazy or not. I can certainly think of more fun ways to spend $5,000. I'd feel more justified if my dentist had told me my teeth would fall out if I didn't have braces put on, but she didn't, so I'll have to settle for vanity.
Back to the seed bread.... My sourdough starter was still in good spirits from the last bread, and it also seemed to be a good idea to use it before it went flat. (I know that I can keep it going by feeding it, but it doesn't make noise like a cat does, reminding you that it needs feeding).
This is a BIG batch of dough, probably the most dough I've ever had in my mixer. And both breads needed a lot of tending, and both were two-day projects, and I got very confused about what I was doing. I ended up baking one in La Cloche and one just on a pan. I was going to bake them seriatim in LaCloche, but I forgot to use parchment or to put cornmeal on the bottom of the pan, so the first loaf got seriously stuck, and I had to spend about 20 minutes hacking away at it. (I said I got confused).
Even so, they both turned out quite well. The non-LaCloche bread was actually more photogenic, because its torpedo shape didn't get deformed by the pan (and also because it didn't have to be hacked off its parchment), but the LaCloche was a prettier color and was crustier.
This sourdough is an extremely satisfying loaf of bread. What with the whole wheat, the wheat bran, the wheat germ, the flax and all the other seeds, this is the most healthy bread I've ever made. I felt postively virtuous eating a slice (or two or three) of this seedy bread. The only thing that is bothering me right now is whether I should have a piece of bread and some cheese and wine for a mid-afternoon snack or another chocolate caramel roll (see next entry) with cappuccino. What a dilemma!

Basic Sourdough

Friday, August 11, 2006
My first sourdough starter seemed to have gone defunct, so I had to start a new one--my second New Zealand starter. I hope that this one lasts long enough to see me through the remaining two sourdoughs. I'd forgotten how long sourdough bread takes to make. I started it on Monday, and baked it this morning (Friday). I have kind of a love-hate relationship with sourdough. It's unpredictable and unreliable and it takes forever, but it does make a fine loaf of bread. Jim just got back from a week in Washington D.C. this afternoon and was greeted by this sourdough, just waiting for him to take pictures of it. He obliged, and we ate a few slices with wine before dinner. Then, as long as we had bread, we decided that it might as well be dinner, so I cooked some bacon, sliced a lovely heirloom tomato, got out some lettuce, and we had BLT's that were as good as the bread.
I think my oven has somehow guessed that I'm about to get rid of it, because it's browning too much on the bottom and not enough on the top. But the kitchen remodel is still months away, so this one has to see me through for another 29 loaves. I'll do some experimenting with my weekend breads.

Bialys

Sunday, August 6, 2006
Being a Midwesterner from birth, I have never had a bialy. I had really never even heard of them until I started perusing The Bread Bible. The closest I'd come to bialys was Max Bialystock in "The Producers." It turns out that bialys are named for their hometown, Bialystock, Poland, which is probably where Max or his ancestors hailed from. Or maybe it's just a joke.
Having no bialys to measure these against, I don't know if they're authentic or even close to it. I do know, as Jim said, they're the best bialys I've ever had. I tried to make a combination of the regular bialys. which have a pocket of onions and poppy seeds, and the crispy, flat bialys, which have an egg white wash and poppy seeds scattered all over the top. I think mine are a little flatter than a standard bialy but not as flat as the flat one. Whatever--it was awfully good. In fact, I don't understand why you can buy bagels (mostly bad ones) in any Midwestern city, but bialys have never caught on. Maybe their time is coming. Maybe I'll open a bialy stand when I retire.

Pretzel Bread

Saturday, August 5, 2006
The most extraordinary thing about this bread is its pre-baking bath in a lye solution. Yes, that's right, you dip it in a caustic drain cleaner solution before baking. At first I wondered if Rose was kidding her readers, just to see how faithful they'd be at following directions. So I Googled "pretzel and lye," and, sure enough, there are all kinds of recipes that say the typical shiny pretzel glaze is due to a lye dip. (Of course, most people with pretzel recipes admit that they personally didn't go for the lye). I decided that I might as well be authentic.
As a public defender, I know that Red Devil lye (the kind specified in the recipe) is used to make methamphetamine. I also know that the local drug task forces go around to hardware stores to tell them to be on the lookout for people who buy lye, or the other nasty things used to make meth. I was kind of scared to go into the hardware store and buy my Red Devil lye, but I thought if I just did it very casually, no one would suspect me. All went well until the hardware store man found the lye for me and asked me what I was going to do with it. "I'm not going to make methamphetamine," I blurted. Dang! That was stupid. Now he looks suspicious. "Are you going to make soap?" "No, bread, actually." He seems very dubious. "Thanks!" I say cheerily, bound on escape, and I pay for the lye--in cash, of course, so they can't trace me.
Once home with my lye (Red Devil seems to have gone out of business, by the way, so I got the only other brand. I feel bad for the Red Devil people if the methamphetamine craze has put them out of business), I again have doubts about the wisdom of this lye bath. There are all kinds of bold-face cautions in the recipe: Use rubber gloves! Put a cloth over your face so you don't smell the fumes! Don't touch the lye solution--it will burn! I wonder why it won't burn my throat, but I decide just to have faith that Rose will not want to kill off her most faithful fans, so I go ahead with the lye dip.
It's actually a very, very easy bread to make, once you get over the trauma of the lye. You just mix everything together, shape the bread, and let it rise for a short time. And it's quite good: enough whole wheat flour to give it a little color and heartiness, bread flour for good texture, and coarse salt sprinkled on top to make it pretzel-y. Once again, Jim and I eat much more of the fresh bread than we intended to do. Or at least than I intended.

Crumpets

Sunday, July 30, 2006
I'm about running out of non-oven breads to make, so I hope the weather gets a little more moderate soon. 85 would seem downright temperate. I remember buying a package of crumpets once and wondering what all the excitement was about. And I noticed that Rose described crumpets as having a "distinctive" taste that you either love or hate, so I wasn't so sure I was going to be a crumpet-lover. Fortunately, I've discovered that I am on the "love" side. Jim wouldn't commit to either strong emotion, but he did say he liked them. Eating his second crumpet, he even went so far as to say that he liked it a lot. Jim is a Minnesotan born and bred, and that's about as close to enthusiasm as he's willing to go. Anyway, I wish I'd doubled the recipe. These crumpets are so easy to make, and the rise up quickly into a bubbly batter. I thought that the crumpets might stick to the crumpet rings when I turned them over, but they didn't. In fact, nothing bad happened at all, except that I temporarily lost one box of crumpet rings, causing me to accuse Jim of putting in some hidden spot where I'd never find it. But he located it (where I'd put it), which made for a happy ending, along with the crumpets and cappuccino.

Grilled Focaccia

Saturday, July 29, 2006
I don't even want to count how many days we are into this heat wave, but it was definitely too hot to turn on the oven; hence, the grilled focaccia. Even though I didn't use the oven, making it was not exactly like sitting by a pool drinking an iced gin and tonic. I still had to put the bread in a 500-degree Weber and take the bread off the baking pan and put it next to a bank of white-hot coals. But taking it back into the air conditioned dining room and eating it was easily the most satisfying thing I'd done all day. (Well, not much of a contest since the other things I did today were buy a tree, do some laundry, and read 150 pages of the transcript of a trial in which my unfortunate client was being pursued by a deputy sheriff while he (the client) was captured on videotape throwing baggies out the window of his truck. By a weird coincidence, the sheriff found some baggies containing methamphetamine by the side of the same road).
This bread was actually one of the most attractive breads I've ever made. Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures of it when it was fresh off the grill looking browned and crisp and quite glorious, and before I hacked it into pieces. But even the hacked-up pieces look pretty good. We had chicken and a mix of what was left of last Sunday's Farmers Market vegetables, and a cruet of olive oil for the bread, and some crisp white wine. Not a bad way to end the day.