The Best Bagels Money Can’t Buy

If you cook mostly for praise (as I do), I maintain that baking bread returns the highest return for the work involved. Gluten haters and keto dieters aside, there are few who don’t love fresh warm bread. And of all the breads, few reward the baker with the oooos and ahhhhs of a fresh bagel.

Even for regular bakers, bagels can be intimidating due to the extra and somewhat mysterious step of boiling them before baking but, they are very easy to make and with good bagels getting harder to buy all the time, well worth the effort. Boiling is the magic that makes a bagel what it is by gelatinizing the starch on the surface resulting in that classic chew while the sugar and baking soda in the water produce a beautiful brown crust.

I was recently at a party that my cousin had in honor of her graduation and when I introduced myself to someone, he said, “Are you the Dennis of the bagels?”

It turned out that my cousin had shared my recipe with him, and he had been making them ever since. He was excited to share with me, how much he loved making them.

It occurred to me that ‘my’ recipe which is based on the formula in Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Bakers Apprentice deserves to have wider distribution. With that in mind, here is the recipe with my custom instructions (i.e. there is no copyright infringement here.)

Makes one dozen bagels

Ingredients

• 750 g Bread Flour (I am partial to King Arthur, but any will work, even all-purpose if that is all you have)

• 428 g cool water (whatever temperature comes out of the cold tap is fine. No need to chill it.)

• 4 g Instant Yeast

• 12 g Salt

• 7 g sugar or diastatic malt powder

To a large bowl add the water, the yeast, and sugar or malt powder and stir to dissolve. If your yeast is old and you want to make sure it is alive, let this mixture sit for 5-10 minutes until you see some bubbles rising. If your yeast if fresh or you have used it recently with success, you can skip this.

Add enough flour to make a batter like pancake batter and mix with a spoon until smooth.

Let rest for 15 minutes or up to 30 minutes.

Add the salt and most of the rest of the flour holding back about a handful or two for the kneading.

Mix with a spoon until combined. Use a dough scraper to incorporate all the flour on the sides and the bottom until the dough resembles a shaggy mass. (Note on the dough scraper. These things are so cheap and so useful that it is worth getting one if you bake bread at all. I buy them a dozen at a time and give them away to people when I teach bread baking.)

Let rest for 15 minutes. This gives the flour a chance to absorb the water.

Use the remaining flour to cover a bit of countertop and your hands.

Turn the dough out on to the floured countertop and with floured hands begin to knead. It will may be sticky at first. Knead by folding and turning 90 degrees for a few minutes until the dough comes together as a ball.

Here is a secret with kneading. You don’t need to knead continuously for long. Knead 5-10 times and let the dough rest covering it with the bowl. After 10 minutes repeat the procedure. After the third or fourth repetition the dough will feel smooth and elastic. You will know when this has happened. In this way, the dough mostly kneads itself.

Try not to add more than the total flour measured but if you must, sparingly dust the counter or your hands to continue being able to knead. You probably won’t have to. This dough is not very sticky because it is such a low hydration.

Note: If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, use it. Because this is a very stiff dough (low hydration), a mixer will make it much easier. But if you don’t have one, it will still be just fine, you will just have to work a tiny bit harder.

When the dough is smooth. Form into a ball and put into a container lightly oiled with vegetable oil that closes tightly or a large bowl covered with plastic wrap. A dough rising container is a worthwhile investment if you make bread more than just occasionally.

Now if time allows, refrigerate the dough for 24-48 hours. A slow cold ferment allows the dough to develop more flavor. I will generally take the dough out of the fridge at bedtime the night before I want to bake. The dough will come up to temperature and rise and it will be ready to bake in the morning. It should have doubled in volume. Otherwise, the day you want to bake, remove from the fridge and let come to room temperature and double in volume.

If you want to bake them the same day as you make the dough. Just double the yeast in the recipe and start with warm water that is about 100 F/35 C. It should feel warm but not hot on your hand.

Remove the dough from the container and using a scale cut the dough with your dough scraper or a knife into 100 gram pieces or 125 grams if you want bigger bagels.

Form each piece into a ball by stretching the dough over itself and tucking the excess under the bottom and pinching it closed. Each one should look like a taught smooth sphere.

Let the dough balls rest on your impeccably clean countertop covered with a damp towel for 30-45 minutes. Meanwhile pre-heat oven to 450 F. If you have a baking stone or steel use it. Bring a large pot of water to boil. To the water add a spoonful of salt and a teaspoon of baking soda and a spoonful of sugar or malt powder. The exact amount of these items not that important. Watch the pot, it will boil over easily making a sticky mess on your stovetop.

Take each doughball and poke a hole through the center by pinching it between your thumb and index finger. Then using the index fingers of each hand gently stretch the dough like a rubber band moving your hands in a circle around each other. Add more fingers as the hole stretches larger until all four fingers of each had are orbiting each other. The dough will look more like a fat onion ring than a bagel. Don’t worry, the bagels will blow up in the oven and the hole will get smaller. If you don’t make the hole bigger than you think it should be at this stage, you’ll end up with a dimple rather than a hole in your final product. It will taste just fine though.

Drop each formed bagel into the boiling solution. You can boil 3 at time if your pot is large enough. After 30 seconds flip them over using a large slotted spoon or strainer. After another 30 seconds remove them with the strainer and place them on a clean towel for a moment to absorb the water then transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Now make an egg wash by beating one egg with a teaspoon (5ml) of water. Brush the boiled bagels with the egg wash (makes them shiny and helps topping stick if using) and top with poppy, sesame seeds, dried onion or anything else you like.

Six 100 gram bagels should fit on a sheet. They should not touch on the sheet.

If you have a baking stone, you can slide the parchment on to the stone. If not, the whole baking sheet can go in the oven. You can prepare the next sheet while the first is baking.

Baking time is about 20 minutes. Turn partway through baking if needed to get even browning. Bagels are done when they are nice and brown. Instant read thermometer should register 200-210 internal temperature.

Cool on a rack and wait until completely cool before cutting and eating. Top with cream cheese, lox, tomatoes, onions, and capers.

These freeze very nicely. Rewarm in a toaster oven to restore the crackle crust.

If you understand Baker’s Math and want to adjust the recipe to make a different amount here is the formula. If you don’t understand it and want to, get Peter Reinhart’s book or email me for an explanation.

Let me know if you make these and how they turn out.

Chanukah Heresy

This Chanukah, I did the unthinkable. Here’s why you should too. 

Going back to the dawn of Jewish history is an argument about which classic holiday food is superior. The Latke-Hamantaschen debate has sought to determine through Talmudic inquiry whether Purim’s triangular, fruit or poppy seed pastry or the fried potato “pancake” associated with Chanukah is “better.” With all due deference to my colleagues at the University of Chicago, this is not an argument for the sake of heaven!

In the first place, these two foods are not even eaten at the same time of year. One never needs to choose between one or the other! Eat hamantaschen in the spring; eat latkes in the winter. Also, Latkes are clearly better so SHUT UP!

But, as I say, the argument is pointless. The real question is concerning the latke itself and what you should put ON it. The classic toppings are sour cream or applesauce and there are strong arguments to be in favor of each. However, I would like to suggest that although these toppings are both tasty, there is another that is superior to both of them. And though Hashmoneans everywhere will be shocked, even revolted when I reveal what it is, nevertheless, I urge you not to troll me until you’ve tried it.

But before we get to that mystery topping, we must understand, how the classic toppings of sour cream and applesauce came to be associated with the latke and why.

Heat, Salt, Grease

In her 2017 James Beard Award winning cookbook, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, Samin Nusrat lays out some basic principles of good cooking and how basic tastes and flavors work together to make the food you cook and eat more delicious. To be honest, a lot of what she says is a no brainer. For example, “Food tastes better with salt.” “Fat is yummy.” Duh! 

The third element is a bit subtler. Acidity, it turns out, is also an important element for good flavor, especially when combined with fat. It’s why we mix vinegar with our olive oil before dumping it all over our salad. Acid cuts the fat on the palate and adds, what Julie Child’s protégé and PBS chef Sara Moultan calls a “pointer upper.”

Starch: The Grand (but bland) Canvas

Now consider the Latke. The humble white potato, a bit of starchy carbohydrate that has, inherently, less flavor than almost any vegetable (perhaps that’s why it is tolerated so well by the palates of so many Americans) mixed with a bit of onion that has been fried in oil until crispy and nice and brown. Salt? There should be some in the mix, if you know what you are doing. In addition, for most, egg serves as a binder and, yes, adds more fat. 

So right from the pan, the latke is hot, crispy, salty, and greasy! Nothing to complain about here! And yet… it’s a little bland. The wisdom of the ages and the yearning of the taste buds tell us something is missing. It’s acid and here is where the applesauce comes in. Applesauce is tart, which is to say acidic! In addition, it is also sweet, which it turns out also tastes good with grease (think of the other Chanukah classic, sufganiot, fried doughnuts) because, well, sweet tastes good with pretty much everything. The human palate favors nothing as much as it does sugar. Stay with me. 

Drop Some Acid, Baby

Ok applesauce, makes sense from a culinary point of view, but what about the sour cream? Dumping more fat on your fat? Doesn’t seem like it should be appealing. But it’s not just cream, it’s SOUR cream. Sour cream is a bit tart and acidic. But it’s not sweet and hence the people who like sweet, turn up their noses. Sour cream poses an additional problem for those who “keep kosher” that is observe the Jewish dietary laws. Sour cream is a dairy food and therefore cannot be served or eaten with meat, because, “Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk!” (Exodus 23:19). I can’t get into it now, but this can be a problem if you’re having latkes with your brisket.  

 Also, it’s a lot of fat! Yeah fat is yummy, but putting fat on your fat? It’s kind of like eating a stick of butter dipped in mayonnaise -- a bit over the top, even for me. 

So applesauce is the clear winner, right?  

Not so fast, Jonagold!  

Hold your horses, Honeycrisp!

There are a few issues with applesauce. First of all, if we are honest, applesauce is a bit insipid. It’s sweet, but only slightly so. It’s tart, but not very. And its flavor is so mild that the it is completely overpowered by the onion in the latke. Why bother? 

Anticipation…is keeping me way-ay-ay-ay-ay-ting. 

So I bet you’re wondering, what exactly am I proposing. Wait for it…It’s ketchup. No, no, hear me out! 

I have often argued that ketchup is, if not the perfect food (it falls short of this since almost no one eats ketchup alone, though I’ve been known to lick it off my plate or my fingers) but it is without a doubt the perfect condiment.

There are five tastes known to the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. Umami is the fifth taste identified by the Japanese and perhaps best translated into English as savoriness.  It is the somewhat elusive flavor that is manifest in roasted chicken and in, you guessed it, concentrated tomatoes.

Ketchup has all five of these tastes! It is hard to think of another food that does. Certainly not one, that is in virtually every American’s refrigerator.  To learn more about why ketchup is the perfect sauce, check out Malcom Gladwell’s piece “The Ketchup Conundrum” in the September 6, 2004 issue of The New Yorker.  

Now before you flip out and call for a cherem, consider, that a latke is little more than a tarted-up hash brown. There is a reason that those 24 hour, serve-breakfast-round-the-clock diners have a bottle of ketchup on every table. (Hasmonean sounds suspiciously like hash brown, no?)

But does ketchup belong on a latke? Who’s to say it doesn’t? Acid? Check. Sweet? Check. More salt? Check. And yes, sweet heaven, yes, umami to light up the weariest tongue. Just one dollop and I think you will agree, the greatest Chanukah miracle this year, is taking place right there in your mouth. 

So on this Festival of Lights, when your reach for that oily, brown, round of crunchy potato goodness, reach also for a bottle of Heinz’s Variety No. 1. Unorthodox? Youbetchya. Will it make your bubbe wince? Without a doubt. But a few drops of the miraculous sauce and you may become convinced that Moshiach is on the way. In the words of the holiday song, “tonight, our people, as we dream, will arise, unite, and be redeemed.” Or as it is often paraphrased, “They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat!” 

“You want ketchup with that?”

Hummus Perfection

This recipe is the result of years of research, experimentation, and testing and is, I believe, as close as you can get to real Middle Eastern hummus in the western kitchen. Hummus may be the perfect food containing a balance of protein, healthy vegetable based carbohydrates, and unsaturated fat. It contains vitamin C, iron, B6, folate, fiber, and micro-nutrients. Although it is high in calories (about 300 in 4 oz (120 ml), it is very filling and a little goes a long way. It contains no added sugar and is gluten free. When combined with a healthy dipper like carrots or celery, it has a good ratio of nutrition to calorie density. I eat it nearly every day. 

Recipe

If you have a kitchen scale that can be set for grams, use it to measure by weight. It’s more accurate than cooking by volume, but the volume method will be fine if you don’t have a scale.

Ingredients

1/2 pound of chickpeas (225 grams)

1 teaspoon of baking soda (5 grams)

6 tablespoons of lemon juice, the juice of about two lemons (100 ml)

4 cloves of garlic crushed (12 grams)

2 teaspoons of kosher salt or 1 1/4 teaspoons table salt (8 grams)

1 cup of tehina (225 grams)

100 ml of ice cold water

Rinse and soak the chickpeas overnight or for 12 hours in enough water to cover them well. They will absorb a lot of water. You can soak them up to 24 hours. Beyond that they will start to ferment and stink. 

After soaking, rinse the beans again with fresh water, drain and place in a large pot. Add enough water to cover well and the baking soda and bring to a gentle boil. Watch the pot carefully.  It will tend to foam up and boil over if you don’t keep an eye on it. Maintain a gentle, low boil, skimming the white foam from the top and discarding.

Cook until the chickpeas are very soft. The time varies but will probably be about 45-60 minutes. The beans are done when you can mash them easily in your mouth with your tongue with almost no resistance. There should be no hard bits inside. They should be very soft but don't cook them to the point where they are mush and completely broken down. Pour into a colander and drain well. Cool until room temperature or just warm. Set aside a few spoonfuls of chickpeas to use as a garnish when you serve if you wish.

Place the chickpeas into a food processor or a good blender and process to a thick paste.  With the machine running add the lemon, juice processing until smooth. Add the salt and the garlic and continue to process until completely smooth.

With the machine running slowly add the tehina and continue to process. Once it is completely mixed, and with the machine still running, add about 7 tablespoons (100 ml) of ice cold water. Stop and check the consistency. Add more ice water as needed to get the consistency slightly thinner than you want it. The hummus will thicken when it rests and more when refrigerated. Let it rest at least an hour before serving. If you won't be serving it for more than a few hours, refrigerate.

I like my hummus on the thick side but if it is too thick for your taste, simply stir in a little water a tablespoon at a time until it is the consistency you want.

When you are ready to serve, spread a layer of hummus on a plate and swirl with the back of a spoon to smooth it. Garnish with the reserved chickpeas, fresh, chopped parsley, and a drizzle of olive oil. You may also top with a variety of toppings from sautéed mushrooms to caramelized onions. Smoked paprika is a favorite of mine. Serve with fresh warm pita or other bread and eat Middle Eastern style by wiping the hummus off the plate with the bread. Or dip fresh cut veggies for a less filling and fattening snack. With protein, unsaturated fat, healthy carbs, fiber, and, vitamin C, I am convinced it is one of the best things you can eat and one of the tastiest. A batch keeps well in the refrigerator for a week though it keeps getting thicker. Add a little water as needed to suit your taste. 

Pita Puffery