pita bread:
whole wheat with sour variant:
- 16 oz whole wheat flour
- 2 oz sour
- 16 oz water
- 0.5 tablespoon Kosher salt
“Primitive” Whole Wheat Pita
1. To start the process of making the dough, first put the water, at a lukewarm temperature, in a large bowl. Next put in the sour and stir thoroughly. Add the remaining ingredients and roughly mix the contents of the bowl with a large spoon. Then mix by hand within the bowl until there are no lumps. Dump out the dough onto a work surface and knead briskly until the dough is smooth, shinny, and elastic.
2. Spread a few drops of vegetable oil over the inside of the bowl. Put the dough back in the bowl. Cover the top of the bowl with a plastic wrap. Leave in a warm (85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit) place until the dough has doubled in volume. In a warm environment this doubling can take as little as four hours depending on the how active the sour is. Whole wheat flour tends to rise quickly. This step is called the bulk fermentation.
3. Pour the risen dough into ten roughly equal pieces for small pitas or six roughly equal pieces for larger pitas on to parchment paper covered with a layer of wheat bran. The parchment paper should be on a peel placed inside a proofing box. Make sure the pitas are flat and do not overlap. They will look like pancakes. Because of the high moisture content (the water weight equals the flour weight, or 100% hydration in baker’s math, the dough will be like a batter. The purpose of this set up is that the dough is so soft and runny, it would otherwise be hard to move it into an oven. Again, the dough pieces during the second proofing should double in volume. This doubling may take two hours.
4. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
5. Gently slide the parchment paper off of the peel into the oven.
6. Ideally the oven will have a steel pad, or failing that, on an oven stone. Flip them over gently with a spatula after three minutes. They should have puffed up into ball shapes. The baked pita should not have any char (burn marks) or even any real color. After two more minutes on the second side they should be done. Put the baked pita in an airtight container or a cover them with kitchen towels. Baked pita will dry quickly when left exposed to air. The time needed for baking is very sensitive to the actual temperature in your oven. Oven temperature settings are notoriously unreliable because oven manufacturers do not spend much money on their thermometers.
Pita, White or Whole Wheat Flour with Yeast
Pita bread with all-purpose flour and yeast
Ingredients:
11 oz lukewarm water
2 teaspoons yeast
16 oz Bread flour or all-purpose flour
1 and ½ teaspoon Kosher salt
1. In a large bowl mix the yeast and lukewarm water. Add the flour and salt and roughly mix the contents of the bowl with a large spoon. Then mix by hand within the bowl until there are no lumps. Dump out the dough onto a work surface and knead briskly until the dough is smooth, shiny, and elastic.
2. Spread a few drops of vegetable oil over the inside of the bowl. Put the dough back in the bowl. Cover the top of the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave in a warm place (ideally 85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit) until the dough has doubled in volume. This should take about 2 hours. This step is called the bulk fermentation.
3. On a work surface, divide the dough into ten roughly equal pieces for small pitas or six roughly equal pieces for larger pitas. Roll these pieces into tight balls. The pieces have to go immediately into Ziplock bags or a proofing box. Otherwise, they will develop a “skin” (dried surfaces) or cracks on the dough. These will allow air to escape as the pita bakes and so they will not rise enough to create a pocket. Allow these dough pieces to double in volume. This may take an hour or two. This is called the second proofing
4. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
5. Gently roll the balls flat with either your hands or a roller. Dust the bottom of a proofing box with a light coating of flour. Put the flattened dough pieces immediately into a proofing box. Alternatively, set them on a lightly floured surface and cover with plastic wrap to prevent developing a skin. Let them rise a third time for 10-20 minutes.
6. Put the dough pieces in the oven, ideally on an oven steel or oven stone. Since these pitas bake very quickly, for the home baker it is easiest to bake one or two pitas at a time. You can use a peel or a rimless cookie sheet lightly dusted with flour to slide the dough pieces into the oven. Make sure they are flat and do not overlap. Flip them over gently with a spatula after three minutes. They should have puffed up into ball shapes. After two more minutes on the second side they should be done. The baked pita should not have any char (burn marks) or even any real color.Put the baked pita in an airtight container or a cover them with kitchen towels.
Whole Wheat Flour and Yeast Variant:
The variants with yeast and whole wheat flour is made the same as above, but the bulk and second rising will be much quicker, generally half the time as with a sour. The yeast in the water should be stirred until the active dry yeast dissolves. The bread flour should give you more rise than the AP flour. Bread flour is widely available in supermarkets. You can also use the high gluten flour that will be distributed in the first class. It will give you the most rise. The additional gluten better captures the steam and carbon dioxide released by fermentation and baking.
Notes:
Whole wheat flour can turn rancid within three weeks of being milled because the oil present in the wheat germ is exposed to air as soon as the kernel is ground. The best way to avoid the rancidity is to grind your own wheat kernels just before using the flour. That requires a grinder and a supply of wheat kernels. If you do buy commercially milled whole wheat, such as the King Arthur or Bob’s Red Mill brands, the best way to avoid rancidity is to store it in your freezer or to use it quickly. King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour has a date of production on top of the bag. It also has a use-by date, which is overly generous. Bob didn’t see a production date on the Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat flour bags.
The time needed for baking any bread is very sensitive to the actual temperature in your oven. Oven temperature settings are notoriously unreliable because oven manufacturers do not spend much money on their thermometers.
You probably notice that all three pita variants – AP flour with yeast, whole wheat flour with yeast and whole wheat flour with sour – are similar. All three have high hydration. That makes the finished pitas soft. The main difference is that the yeast variants take about half the time to rise as the sour variant.
French bread
- 16 oz AP flour or Bread Flour
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 10 oz water
- 3 teaspoons Kosher salt
1. The pre-ferment consists of a pinch of yeast in the summer or a quarter teaspoon in the winter, 2 oz of lukewarm water and 2 oz of flour (either AP or Bread. This small amount can be mixed by hand. Note, the pre-ferment is not included in the 16 oz of flour, the 1 tsp of yeast, and 10 oz of water in the main dough recipe. Let the pre-ferment rise for 24 hours in warm (80 degree) area.
2. The final mixing will add the 10 ounces of water, the 16 ounces of bread flour, the tsp of yeast, and the 0.5 Tablespoon of salt to the pre-ferment. Shape the dough into ball.
3. You want to reach a double volume, with the dough covered and kept in a warm place.
4. The third rise comes after the dough is shaped into a loaf and placed in a proofing box. The shaping is much easier to demonstrate than to describe in words.
5. The final proof can also be in a linen lined proofing basket. This is mostly used with high-hydration doughs. Is is also possible to put the shaped dough in an open or a lidded pan. We’ll cover all four ways to do the final proof in class.
6. No matter which container you use, need to score the dough just for placing it in the over to prevent cracking. Versions in baking pans will take longer to fully bake. With a lidded pan, the lid has to be off our the bread toward the end of the baking or the bread will not have any color.
7. A typical oven temperature for a loaf would be 350 degrees. Baguette shapes and light textured breads would have higher baking temperatures, such as 400.
8. Depending on the oven, you should pour boiling water into a pan or directly on to the bottom of the oven right after the loaf-shaped dough goes in the oven. French breads usually have a crusty exterior. The baking time for a single loaf of 28 ounces would be around 35 minutes. You should have both a good bottom crust and a good top color and the hollow sound when you thump the bottom. This is the point at which a needle probe thermostat becomes very handy. Once the bread is done it should be placed on wire rack to cool.
Notes
Loaves require a lower baking temperature than the pita bread. A 28 ounce loaf would burn on the outside before the interior was baked if you used the 500 degrees specified for the pita.
French bread is the name in Bob Sandy’s father’s bakery for a crusty white sandwich bread. Many other bakeries used that name. There was nothing particularly French about it. It could just as easily have been called “Italian”. Before commercial breads became soft and tasteless, as in Wonder Bread–a national brand popularized by the Continental Baking Company, unsliced “French” bread was the most prominent store-bought bread.
This French bread uses yeast instead of a sour. The yeast cuts the proofing times in half. We will have three proofing steps, and use steam in baking. The shaping will be covered in class.
Obviously, this French bread will not have a sour taste. To enhance the yeasty taste we will use a pre-ferment. In class we will use a stand mixer to make the dough quicker. The pre-ferment is similar to a sour, except that it won’t have a bacteria that give sours their sour taste. That means there won’t be any lactic acid.
The finished dough with the amounts in the ingredients list will weigh about 28 ounces. The final weight of the baked bread depends on the shape (a long thin baguette shape loses the most water while a round shape loses the least). It also depends on how crusty the bread is. Using steam will result in a crustier bread and less water loss in the baking and cooling after baking. Lastly, the container used for baking affects the water loss. A loaf baked on a steel will lose the most water. A loaf baked in a lidded pan will lose the least. A loaf baked in an open topped pan will be between these. Some dense breads, such as rye and pumpernickel, lose less water weight. Lastly, large loaves lose less water weight as a percentage than small loaves.
Commercial bakeries need to meet a target weight for their finished loaves, so that their labelled weights meet legal standards. Home bakers do not have these concerns. A good guess for the water weigh loss would be 20% for oblong shaped loaves baked on a steel surface. That would take our original 28 ounce dough down to 22.4 ounces. Our trial loaf came in at 25 ounces. That is a good size for a loaf. A large loaf would be 32 ounces at the baked-and-cooled weight.
The above dough used to make “French” bread can be formed into a baguette shape. The word “baguette” in French means “stick”. Bakeries in France used to exclusively make large oblong or round loaves. As families became smaller, starting in the 1920s, bakers figured out they could do better selling smaller loaves. Also, the stick shaped bread bakes way faster, which saved oven time.
Parisian bakeries compete every year for the honor of being judged the best bread in the city. The winning bakery gets a four thousand Euro prize, but the additional business from winning is the real payoff. The winner also gets to provide daily bread to the residence of the President of France at the Elyseé Palace. To get more flavor in their breads the competitors stretch out the pre-ferment and proofing process for six days by retarding (slowing down the rise) in a fridge, and making second and third pre-ferments incorporating the previous pre-ferment. Since we aren’t in business and will not be supplying the Elyseé Palace, one pre-ferment will be enough.
France has a tendency to regulate everything. In the case of baguettes there law listing the allowed ingredients. Anything not on the list would prevent the product from being called a “baguette”. There are also strict size and weight rules. The details are in the Wikipedia entry for “baguette”.
We will cover the shaping of baguettes in class. It is hard to slide a proofed baguette into an oven on a peel without bending the stick. The solution is a long narrow board that will be demonstrated in class. Keeping the sticks both straight and separate requires a special linen cloth, which will also be demonstrated.
Sour dough bread
Rustic variant:
- 8 oz high gluten flour
- 8 oz first clear flour
- 2 oz sour
- 10 oz water
- 0.5 tablespoon Kosher salt
White Bread variant:
- 16 oz AP flour or Bread flour
- 2 oz sour
- 10 water
- 0.5 tablespoon Kosher salt
Everything in the section on French bread carries over to making sour dough breads. The only difference is the longer proofing times required when using a sour as the only leavening.
The ingredients above will give you loaves with a smooth crumb. The “crumb” refers to the texture of the interior. A smooth crumb is best for sandwiches. The opposite of a smooth crumb is an open crumb, with lots of holes. An open crumb would not work well for some sandwiches, such as peanut butter and jelly. The peanut butter and jelly would leak out of the holes. Some people like to make a sour dough bread with an open crumb. There are entire books on how to get an open crumb in a sour dough bread:
The motivations for making open crumb breads appears to be the aesthetics and the challenge. The author of the above book claims that open-crumb loaves are more digestible. That appears to nonsensical. The first two times this course was offered, making an open-crumb sourdough bread was not covered. What changed for the this third offering an experience I had at the farmer’s market in Lippitt Park in Providence. When I shopped there in the summer I was amazed to find that a half dozen booths were selling sourdough bread. All of them had open crumbs. Even more amazing to me was that some of them were able to charge $15 for a loaf. When I expressed my amazement to my daughter, she said she. prefers the open-crumb. style to my sourdough bread. To please my daughter, I have been experimenting with open-crumb sourdough breads.
The “secrets” are increasing the amount of water while holding the other ingredients constant (called a high hydration dough), gentle mixing, and lifting and folding the dough many times during the proofing. You also have to be very gentle while shaping the dough to keep in as much air as possible. If holey bread is your grail, buy the book. It costs $25.
Kaiser and other rolls with egg-based doughs
- 16 oz Bread flour
- 2 eggs yolks
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 8 oz water
- 0.5 tablespoon Kosher salt
- 1 oz unsalted butter or vegetable oil
1. In terms of the baking process, all of the ingredients are combined in a stand mixer. The mixing should be at a relatively slow speed for ten minutes. The finished dough should be smooth and shiny.
2. The proofing time for the volume to double will be shorter than for French bread described above because the egg yolks and butter (or vegetable oil) give the fermentation a boost.
3. After the bulk proofing, the dough should be scaled in 4.5 ounces pieces. Our standard one pound of flour yields enough dough for 6 kaiser rolls at this scaling,
4. Round the pieces by hand.
5. Put these pieces into a proof box for a half hour.
6. The next step is the hand-shaping (klopping) process, which will be covered in class. A verbal description would be useless. Greenstein, writing long before YouTube videos were invented, does try to explain it with words and pen-and-ink drawings. It is pretty hard to follow.
7. Next spread poppy seeds over the bottom of the proofing box. Place the formed pieces top side down over the poppy seeds. Leave room for the rolls to expand. Let them proof up to double their size, about an hour.
8. Preheat your oven to 425.
9. Place the rolls, top side up, on a sheet pan that has been lightly oiled. The kaisers rolls won’t be quite as crusty as on a steel, but the handling will be much easier.
10. You will need steam, either, depending on your oven, from pouring boiling water into a pan that was in the oven while preheating, or directly on to the bottom of your oven.
11. The rolls are done when they have a light brown color. Depending on our oven, you may have to experiment if the bottom of the rolls have too much color before the tops are done. One solution to too much bottom color is to put the baking rack near the top of the oven. Another solution, if your oven has this setting, is to bake part of the time on the convection setting.
Notes:
Amazon sells several stamps to create the curved indentations in a kaiser roll. The cheapest is Ateco Kaiser Cutter, at $9. There are photos submitted by users of finished rolls on the Amazon website that look pathetic. Shaping them by hand is not hard to learn.
Challah
- 16 oz AP flour or Bread Flour
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 8 oz water
- 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
- 2 oz vegetable oil
- 2 oz sugar
1. You will also need an egg in addition to the ones required in the dough for an egg wash. The egg wash is a beaten egg that is brushed onto the exterior of the proofed loaf just before it goes into the oven. A single egg is sufficient to wash two or three loaves.
2. The ingredients list has either AP flour or bread flour. With the dinner rolls that are meant to be soft, the AP is fine. For the challah the bread flour would give you more rise and firmer product. We prefer using the bread flour, but if you want a softer challah, use the AP. Commercial challahs are less rich and softer than this challah. Our intent here is to make a substantial bread.
3. The bulk proofing is the same as for the kaiser rolls and dinner rolls. The amount of dough made from the ingredients list is enough for one large challah.
4. After the bulk proofing, divide the dough into three equal parts. Round each piece for a short second proofing. If the dough sticks to you hands when rounding then dust the dough with flour and dust your hands. The dough will be soft compared to the other doughs in this class.
5. Because of the rich dough with sugar, this second proofing can be short, about fifteen minutes, depending on how warm your room is or if your oven has a proof setting. The exact proofing times for the bulk and second proof also depends on the liveliness of your yeast.
6. The rolling out into tapered strips will be demonstrated in class.
7. The next step is braiding the three strips. This step will also be demonstrated in class. A three braid challah is simple. We will also demonstrate a six braid challah. The final proofing is also short, 15 minutes at a room temperature of 70 degrees.
8. The baking will be without steam. Bake at 350 degrees. The dough will be placed on baking sheets. We will use both color and internal temperature, 200 to 210, to judge when the challahs are ready.
Notes
The dough for challah is similar to dough for kaiser and dinner rolls. It has more egg yolks. It also has sugar and vegetable oil. If you don’t keep kosher you can substitute butter for the vegetable oil. The extra eggs and the sugar and vegetable oil (or butter) make the dough richer.
Dinner rolls
1. Use the same dough as for Kaiser rolls
2. The rolls are scaled at 2 ounces. The standard one pound of flour recipe would yield 14 dinner rolls.
3. The proofing and seeding is the same as with the kaiser rolls. The final shaping will be covered in class. We will demonstrate shaping round, figure eight, twisted, croissant, and oblong shapes. Just before baking wash the tops of the rolls with a beaten egg and sprinkle different seeds/toppings on rolls by shape. We will use pretzel salt, and caraway, sesame, and poppy seeds.
4. They do not require steam as dinner rolls are usually meant to be soft.
5. Also, the baking time is less because the rolls are smaller. Aim for a light golden color. The lighter color is further reason for the shorter baking time.
Notes
Bob Sandy’s father’s bakery was mainly a wholesale bakery that sold products to independent drivers who, in turn, sold to restaurants and groceries. Over a hundred bakery trucks would visit at set times from around 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM. They pre-ordered and expected to have everything waiting for them at their arrival time. Dinner rolls were its biggest item. They were served in fancy restaurants all over southeast Michigan. We called them “assorted rolls” because they came in four different shapes in a bag of a dozen rolls.
Rye Bread
- 2 oz sour
- 6 oz medium rye flour
- 10 oz first clear flour
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 1 tablespoon Kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
- 10 oz water
1. The dough using the ingredients listed will be fairly stiff. The stand mixture has to set on a low speed. Again, run the mixer until the dough is a smooth, shiny, and forms a tight ball.
2. Doughs with rye flour will be sticky. You will need to put vegetable oil around the dough before putting it in the proof box.
3. The bulk proofing is faster with the rye flour than with a pure wheat flour. It can be as little as two hours if the proofing is in an oven with a proof setting. Again, the listed ingredients will yield one medium loaf.
4. By the way, if you want to have a seeded rye bread, add caraway seeds to the dough. Some people hate the taste of caraway seeds and others love it. Add the caraway seeds according to your tastes.
5. After the bulk fermentation you need to take the dough out and work it into a ball for a second proofing. Again, the dough should double in size during the second proofing.
We will cover the shaping in the class. It will be similar to the shaping of the sour dough and French breads.
6. The oven needs be pre-heated to 350 degrees.
7. The bottom of the proof box has to covered with corn meal for the final proofing.
8. The bread has to be scored just before going into the oven.
9. The shaped and fully proofed dough can be placed in an oven with a dusted peel or a by hand. Don’t forget to score the dough just before it goes in the oven.
10. You must have steam in the oven. Because the dough is dense, the baking will take longer than with the challah and the French breads.
Notes
Jewish style rye breads are meant to hold up to sandwich meat, such as corned beef or pastrami. Soft breads won’t hold up. Rye breads need to have at least 25% rye flour to 75% first clear flour to have a decent rye taste. The ingredient list we put together has 37.5% rye flour. We have tried 50%. rye flour. That bread had a grayish color, but lots of rye taste. Another difference between the rye bread and the previous breads is the use of both a sour and yeast. Doughs made with rye are more acidic than pure wheat flours. Pure rye flours have a pH of around 4.2, which is comparable to canned tomato juice. That high acidity is why cans of tomato juice have linings that resist acids. Using a sour that is even more acidic than the dough actually improves the rye bread by preventing the finished bread from being gummy. The chemistry of how this works is complicated. If you are curious here is a link:
Interestingly, any acid can help. Bob learned to use honey, which is also more acidic than the rye dough, in a class by Stanley Ginsberg, the author of a book on how to bake with rye flour. Going with a really low ratio of rye flour can avoid the need for an acid, but the resulting bread won’t taste like a rye bread.
Bob has tried using just the sour, but never got enough rise without also using yeast. David has been able to do it, but the process took days. The bakeries Bob worked in always used both a sour and yeast. Lastly, another difference between the rye bread ingredients and the previous breads is the additional of vital wheat gluten. It helps with the rise when you have a high fraction of rye flour.
Pumpernickel Bread
- 2 oz sour
- 6 oz medium rye flour
- 10 first clear flour
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
- 4 oz dark caramel
- 3 oz altus (remove crust from old rye bread, soak in water overnight in a fridge and squeeze out the water)
- 10 oz water
1. The instructions for mixing, proofing, and scoring, and baking pumpernickel are the same as for rye bread, except for the additional ingredients of burned sugar and alte.
Notes
Pumpernickel bread is even denser than the rye bread. The word “alte” means old as in the yiddish phrase “alte cocker”. It is the stale rye bread that has the crust removed and then soaked with water and kept overnight in a fridge and then squeezed to remove most of the water. The alte makes the bread more dense. The burned sugar adds a little bitterness, which is characteristic of pumpernickel. There are crazy substitutes for the burned sugar suggested on various YouTube videos on how to allegedly make pumpernickel. Don’t use molasses or coffee grounds! The former makes the bread sweet and the latter makes it taste like coffee. One common variant is to add raisins. The amount would be to your taste. A less common, but very traditional ingredient is charnushka, a seed with an interesting taste. Here is a link about that seed:
https://www.seriouseats.com/spice-hunting-charnushka-nigella-onion-seed
When the bakery in Worcester, Widoffs, where my father got his first bakery job in the United States, closed in 2015, Russ and Daughters hired some of the former Widoffs bakers from Worcester to make Jewish style breads in a new bakery in Brooklyn, exclusively for their lower East Side store and restaurant. They make a charnushka pumpernickel.
Bagels
- 16 oz high gluten flour
- 2 oz malted barley syrup
- 8 oz water
- 2 oz sour
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 7 grams food grade lye
1. The traditional boiling water included food grade lye. Its concentration is 0.15% of the weight of the water. A quart of water weighs 946 grams. A pot that safely holds six quarts of water would have 6 times 946, or 5,876 grams. The amount of food grade lye needed would be 0.15% of that, or 9 grams if your scale was accurate to a gram. The first time I tried to make bagels with food grade lye, I was off by an order of magnitude, 1.5% food grade lye instead of 0.15%. I wound up with pretzels that looked like bagels.
2. Scale bagels at 5 ounces.
3. One absolutely crucial factor is obtaining a good bagel is to make sure that they have proofed enough so that when you put them in the boiling solution they float. Try one bagel as a test and if it sinks to the bottom, let the remaining bagels proof some more. What happens is the bagels sink to the bottom of the pot is that they will stick to the bottom and eventually puff up enough to float. Some of the stuck bagels will tear off and cling to the bottom. That creates an opening for the boiling liquid to get inside the bagel. The result is a soggy bagel.
4. After the bagels are boiled for about a minute, they need to be scooped out quickly and, while wearing rubber gloves, dipped in bowls of whatever seeds you prefer from: everything mix (which we will cover how to make in class), sesame, poppy seed, and salt. We put seeds on the top and bottom. Here we are breaking with tradition. Bagels used to be seeded on only the top. We just like more seeds.
5. As soon as the bagels are seeded, they are ready for the oven. We use parchment paper over the baking steel because it makes it easier to clean the seeds that fall off the bagels onto the baking steel. Set your oven to 400 degrees, with twenty minutes on one side and then 15 minutes on the other. Take one bagel out and cut it in half to check if they are fully baked before taking all of the bagels out. By the way, there is no need to have steam in the oven. The boiling is sufficient to get a chewy crust.
Notes
Bagels will be our most complicated product. They are very chewy on the outside, or at least real ones are. That is why you need the high gluten flour. To achieve that chewy exterior, the bagels have to be boiled.
While you should certainly would avoid skin contact at even the 0.15% concentration of the boiling liquid with lye, it is dilute enough to just require rubber gloves for handling the boiled bagels. The pot for the boiling has to be stainless steel because the lye solution will react with aluminum or enamel pots. Some YouTube videos suggest using just salt or just malted barley syrup in the boiling solution. You will not get the same color or shine from either salt or malted barley syrup.
We have discussed the issues with bagel doughs burning up KitchenAid bowl-lift mixers in the section on equipment. There is no reason to belabor that issue here. Bagels do not need a bulk fermentation. The malted barely syrup in the dough speeds up the fermentation. Some recipes call for sugar. Montreal bagels use honey. We prefer the taste of the malted barley syrup in the dough. We also use a sour for taste. We haven’t had any luck with relying solely on the sour for leavening. The dough is too heavy. Most commercial bakeries use a different method to get a strong yeasty taste in their bagels. They retard the formed bagels dough pieces by keeping them for 24 hours in a fridge. Few homes have the necessary empty fridge space. The bagel bakeries have big fridges into which they can roll racks and racks of formed bagels. The best you can do in winter is use an unheated room to hold a few dozen bagels. Between using a small amount of sour versus using the cold sun room, we prefer the taste with the sour.
Bob Sandy recently visited Montreal, which has its own style of bagels. The main difference for these famous bagel shops is the use of honey in the boiling liquid. They do make a big deal out of using their original wood-fired ovens, but that does not create a smokey taste in the bagels. The first and still the most famous bagel shop is named after the street it is on, St. Viateur. Bob had a tour of this bakery and had a chance to examine their bags of flour. It was Ardent Mills Keynote brand, which has 13% protein. Bob uses either the King Arthur Sir Lancelot brand (14.2%) or Gold Medal All Trumps brand (14.2%). Small differences in the protein content make a big difference in the how chewy the bagel is. A protein content of 13% is about the closer to King Arthur’s bread flour, at 12.7%, than to a high gluten flour.
Other differences between the course’s bagel recipe and the almost all commercial bakery bagel recipes is a softer dough, from both lower protein content in the flour and from adding more water. Stiff doughs cannot be shaped into bagels by machine. Oddly, even bakeries that do shape their bagels by hand, such as Saint Viateur, are making bagels with softer doughs. The machine made bagels run the gamut from a little soft, such as Saint Viateur’s, to very soft, such as those sold by Whole Foods, to as soft as Wonder Bread, such as Linder’s bagels. Lastly, almost all commercial bagel bakeries use dough conditioners. A bakery based in the Detroit area, New York Bagels, advertises that its only ingredients are flour, water, yeast, and malt barely syrup. Bob recommends them. The dough conditioners help the finished bagels retain moisture. That gives them a longer shelf life. Other chemicals in dough conditioners soften the dough to make it more easily worked by machine. If you are curious about the chemicals in dough conditioners see:
Bob just freezes the bagels he will not eat within a few hours of baking.
Five ounces is much smaller than most bagels from bagel shops in Providence, such as Providence Bagels and the former Rebelle Bagels. Bagels used to be much smaller in the 1960s. Back then they were all hand-formed. I will cover how to form the bagels in class.
One final bit of bagel trivia. The holes in the bagels are not there so that bagels can be stacked on a stick. The bagels bake faster with a hole in the middle. You can try baking a few without a hole and will see that by the time the interior of the bagel with no hole is fully baked the exterior will be as hard as a brick.
Körözött
Körözött is a traditional Hungarian toping for pumpernickel bread. The recipe below is quick and simple. In a food processor combine:
1. one package of Narragansett Creamery Salty Sea Feta, cut into chunks
2. one package of Kraft Cream Cheese, cut into chunks
3. Three (3) Tablespoons of Paprika
4. 1 teaspoon of yellow mustard
5. a half cup of sour cream
6. one small onion roughly chopped
Run the food processor until the ingredients are all smooth. Some recipes call for caraway seeds. If you are putting the Körözöt on rye bread that has caraway seeds, then you already have that flavor. If not, a Tablespoon of caraway seeds can be added to the food processor before the mixing. Ideally, the caraway seeds should be ground fine in a coffee mill type of grinder, but you can use whole caraway seeds.
JewishStyleBreads 