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We're having assorted snacks (with cheese dip), reheated pizza, rye bread and baked pork-n-beans.
There was a discussion on the BBGA forum the other day that touched on Montreal bagels. We had them in Ottawa and they were great.
It appears they're made without salt, so they're softer than New York style bagels, and they're supposed to be baked in a wood fired oven so they have a smoky flavor.
Failing a drug test due to poppy seeds may be an urban legend enhanced by the Seinfeld episode, but it is interesting that some drug tests do ask that question. I had lunch once in the Soup Kitchen International in NYC that later became famous as a result of Seinfeld. Good soup.
I thought about doing some kind of groundhog-themed quiz today, but couldn't come with one. Maybe next year I'll ask the same question I did this year. 🙂
According to the web, all Caputo flours are unbleached, and any European flour is unbrominated. I don't think I have a local source for it, but I don't use a lot of cake flour anyway.
Personally, I think I can taste coffee in both bread and chocolate. It's a cheat anyway, that's NOT how Eastern European black breads are colored! They do it the old-fashioned way by slow baking the bread so the Maillard reaction happens on the inside. Adding molasses or barley syrup will also darken breads, and there are some rye bread recipes that call for them.
What bagel recipe did you use? I've been using the one in Reinhart's Artisan book (ABED) because it makes a smaller amount of dough. Bagel dough should be really smooth, Peter calls it satiny. I scale it, rolling it into balls, then let it rest for a few minutes before shaping it. I use the poke a hole in the middle method to shape bagels for two reasons. One is I have fairly big hands. The other is we prefer 3 ounce bagels to the 4.5 ounce ones you get at the deli, and that's just not enough dough to do the wrap around the hand method.
Most recipes tell you to make sure the bagels pass the float test before boiling them, but most of the time by the time I've finished shaping a pan of bagels the first few pass the float test already. I give them a minute or two to rest while I set up the toppings. I boil them for 30-40 seconds per side.
My favorite topping is cheese, I use a four cheese blend of shredded cheese that I get at Sams. My wife likes poppy seeds, with or without sesame seeds, on BOTH sides. (BTW, I've heard that if you eat too many things with poppy seeds on them, it can cause you to fail some drug screening tests for opiates.)
I still haven't tried making sodium carbonate by baking sodium bicarbonate, that's supposed to raise the pH of your poaching liquid from about 8.3 to over 11, and it is safer to use than lye. I usually throw a little honey or barley malt syrup in the poaching liquid along with the baking soda.
We have a number of Middle Eastern ethnic grocery stores and even more Asian ones and one Russian one that I've not been impressed with. I don't recall seeing any flours there.
If you search for 'Reinhart marbled rye recipe', it looks like there are at least two sites having a version of his recipe, though not quite identical to the one in my edition of BBA, which calls for shortening rather than oil.
To get the two shades of dough I use corn syrup in the light one and light molasses in the dark one, and I also add some powdered caramel color that I got from King Arthur.
I divide both recipes into 6 parts and flatten them into rectangles, then make 3 stacks of light/dark/light/dark. Which one I put on the outside varies, I can never decide which I like better on the outside.
I press the stacks even flatter then roll each stack up into a loaf shape, producing 3 loaves with the marbled spiral when you cut it. I bake them free form, but you can also bake them in a loaf pan, in which case you might want to make just 2 loaves.
Stanley Ginsberg's book The Rye Baker talks quite a bit about the differences between baking with wheat flour and with rye flour, getting into the underlying chemical changes, and why a sour rye starter is helpful when making high rye percentage (all the way up to 100%) breads. I've already read that chapter twice and I'm sure I'll read it a few more times.
Here's a picture of the bottom of one of the apple pies I baked in a Norpro non-stick pie pan and then transferred to a glass pie pan for cutting.
Attachments:
You must be logged in to view attached files.If you have Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, the marbled rye bread recipe in it isn't a really strong rye (30/70 blend of rye/white flour, though I currently do 40/60 using a coarse pumpernickel flour) but I've never had it go gummy on me.
It is so hard to find rye flour in the stores that I wouldn't be surprised to learn few people make rye bread at home any more. It's also one of the areas where packaged breads are usually decent, certainly better than the cheap white breads.
I was looking through the 74 recipes I haven't made yet, trying to decide one or two to try next; some of them will require finding a few ingredients I don't normally have on hand, like plum jam.
The pies came out great, they're already loose in the Norpro pans, I'll transfer them to other pie pans for cutting (one of them is going to Omaha for a baby shower) once they've cooled a bit. Since going to pastry school I've been using the convection cycle in my oven for pies, I did these for 25 minutes at 385F convection, then dropped the temp to 340F non-convection for another 20 minutes. I'll see if I can get a shot of the bottom of one of them to show how it looks.
Waiting until tomorrow afternoon to cut into the Frisian black bread is going to be a long wait, it smells very interesting. I get strong notes of molasses, though there's no molasses in it. Just a little honey.
The Frisian rye bread is out, but it needs to sit for 24 hours before cutting. The top is a bit darker,than the rest of it but it is called a black rye bread. I'll have a report on it tomorrow in the rye project thread. Probably won't get it posted until after the Super Bowl.
The pies just went in.
Based on the recipes I've made over the years, several of which have you mist the loaves just before baking them, that has a somewhat different effect than steaming them. I'm pretty sure misting them keeps the surface cooler so it extends oven spring, I'm not sure steam does that, though in both cases I think the moisture helps gelatinize the starch on the crust.
I'm getting ready to make two apple pies tomorrow, one for us and another for a baby shower. I made and scaled the pie crust this evening. The pie filling is from the freezer, I got it out to thaw in the refrigerator a couple of days ago.
The recipes make a range of sizes, some just one loaf, some a larger loaf, some two loaves, and there are several recipes for things like rolls or flatbreads that make a dozen or more.
The recipe I'm working on now should work in one standard size loaf pan, one I'm thinking of doing soon makes a pretty big (2.5 pound) round loaf.
The thing about having a full pan of water in the oven is that it doesn't boil off very fast. Putting some water in a dry hot pan gives a short burst of steam.
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