Anyone who has been following my exploits on American Idle knows that been doing a lot of baking lately. Mostly I've been cooking up pizzas, experimenting with different formulas for dough and toppings. I've had some very impressive successes and some monumental failures, but it's most been a lot of fun to play around in the kitchen.
I haven't really delved into anything more serious for lack of equipment. But in the last week or so, I have picked up a few things here and there from departing volunteers and have added some more essentials to my growing collection of kitchenware including a massive stockpot, baking dishes and measuring spoons. Now I have just about everything I need to make bagels. BAGELS!!!!!!
If there's one thing that I've been craving that I can't get in Samoa, it's bagels. There's a great bakery in town called Mari's that has bagels on the menu, but I've never actually seen them for sale. For the longest time, I had been expecting another PCV in my group to make them, but after repeated claims, he never came through. A fellow volunteer did bring me a bag of sesame bagels from Hawaii on her return from the States, but they disappeared in a hurry, and that was a long time ago. Since I now have all the tools at hand, I couldn't wait any longer. It was time to get my hands dirty and cook up some Jewish soul food. (What are you supposed to do when the closest bagelry is 4,000 miles away across a large body of water?)
I went down to Lucky Foodtown and picked up 3 kinds of flour, all-purpose, whole wheat and cornmeal. I bought a jar of molasses from Chan Mow (I was going to try to make the pumpernickel variation even thought I couldn't find rye anywhere in Samoa, but, to be honest, I didn't look that hard). Everything else in the recipe I had on hand (water, sugar, salt, egg, yeast).
This morning, after feeding the kittens, I started getting down to business. I mixed the dough in my new, very large enamel mixing bowl. It was a major pain. The recipe calls for an electric mixer to whip up the 5? cups of flour and water into a dough. I don't have an electric mixer. All I've got is a wooden spatula, my hands and my Greek God like forearms. I worked over the dough for something like half an hour to get it to smooth out. It wasn't totally smooth, but I was worn out, so fuck it, time to move to next step.
The dough sat covered for 40 minutes to rise. In the meantime, I played FreeCell (I'm addicted, I admit it) and lost an auction on eBay for an IBM 1 GIG micro drive that I was desperate to win. I need it for my new camera. Oh well. I'll find another one somewhere else.
Back in the kitchen, I removed the towel and looked at the dough. It had risen to twice its original size, but the color was more of a light, whole wheat brown, than the dark pumpernickel I was expecting. Maybe I didn't put in enough molasses. Or was it the missing rye? (look of confusion)
It was time to start forming the bagels.
There seem to be two schools of thought on this. One method of bagel formation involves rolling the dough into a rough sphere, then poking a hole through the middle with your thumbs and then pulling at the dough around the hole to make the bagel. This is the "hole-centric" method.
The second method involves making a long cylindrical worm of dough and wrapping it around your hand into a loop and mashing the ends together. This is the "dough-centric" method. The latter seemed overly complex so I went with the "hole-centric" method.
It doesn't really matter how you make them, as long as they aren't made with something like a cookie cutter. Otherwise you risk pushing your bagels out of the Jewish realm and making them distinctly Gentile. Bagels are not meant to be symmetrical and perfect. Like snowflakes, no two genuine bagels should be exactly alike.
I separated the dough into 12 little, roughly even balls. This is harder than it seems. How do you judge 1/12th of a big a chunk of dough? It turns out I couldn't. But I nailed 1/11th right on the head. I didn't want to make 11 bagels. It just didn't seem right. 13, okay. 12, right on. But 11? Uh-unh. I just pulled a little bit from each of the 11 to make the 12th and I was ready to move on to the formation.
I flattened each sphere down and poked holes in the center with my thumbs, smoothing the dough and trying to maintain a roughly round shape. It's amazing. It's actually starting to look like I'm going to have a dozen bagels on my hands in no time at all. Now we're starting to get somewhere.
I placed the bagels on my floured cutting board to rise again while I boiled the sugar water mixture in the stock pot. I didn't have any granulated sugar so I used brown sugar. What did it matter?
After 20 minutes, the bagels had risen about ? again, the water was simmering gently and it was time for bagels to take a hot bath. The bagels should sink first, then gracefully float to the top of the simmering water. If they float, it's not a big deal, but it does mean that you'll have a somewhat more bready (and less bagely) texture.
There was nothing even remotely graceful about my bagels. They just popped right up to the surface. After soaking for 4-5 minutes, the dough was as wrinkled as an old Yenta after a long bath.
I could only boil 4 bagels at a time. After 3 shifts of soaking, I laid them all out on baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. I was supposed to brush the tops lightly with a wash of egg yolk, but when I took my one remaining egg out of the fridge, it was frozen solid.
I'm having some climate control issues with my refrigerator at the moment. It turned out not to be such a big deal. I let the egg thaw just enough so that I could easily pull off the semi-frozen egg whites, then defrosted the yolk by gently whipping it with a fork.
I threw the bagels in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius (400F). In 30 minutes, I had 12 steaming golden brown bagels. I was supposed to let them cool, but I couldn't wait. I cracked one open and slapped on cream cheese. Delicious! Give me some smoked whitefish and I'd be in absolute heaven.
(What's really impressive is that I managed to make these bagels despite the smell of a recently deceased and decaying rat that was festering above the ceiling in my kitchen. The odor would have overcome a lesser man.)
The best part came when I brought a few bagels over to my neighbors two doors down, Masima and Fetu. I doubt they've ever had bagels before so they wouldn't have anything to compare them against. And, being Samoan, they would never tell me if they didn't like them. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that for once I was able to share a little part of my culture with Samoans who've given me so much of theirs.
THE BASIC BAGEL
| Amount | Measure | Ingredient -- Preparation Method |
| ---------- | ----------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| 2 | c | Warm water (100 to 115 -deg.F) |
| 2 | pk | Active dry yeast |
| 3 | tb | Sugar |
| 3 | ts | Salt |
| About 5 3/4 | cups | All-purpose flour (unsifted) |
| 3 | qt | Water with 1 Tbl sugar |
| | | Cornmeal |
| 1 | | Egg yolk beaten with 1 Tbl -water |
Combine water and yeast in the large bowl of an electric mixer.
Let stand 5 minutes. Stir in sugar and salt.
Gradually mix in 4 cups of the flour. Beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. With a spoon, mix in about 1 1/4 cups more flour to make a stiff dough. Turn out on a floured board and knead until smooth, elastic, and no longer sticky, about 15 minutes.
Add more flour as needed (dough should be firmer than for most other yeast breads). Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until almost doubled, about 40 minutes. Knead dough lightly, then divide into 12 equal pieces. To shape, knead each piece, forming it into a smooth ball. Holding ball with both hands, poke your thumbs through the center. With one thumb in the hole, work around perimeter, shaping bagel like a doughnut, 3 to 3 1/2 across. Place shaped bagels on a lightly floured board, cover lightly, and let stand in a warm place for 20 minutes. Bring the water-sugar mixture to boiling in a 4 or 5 quart pan.
Adjust heat to keep it boiling gently. Lightly grease baking a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal. Gently lift one bagel at a time and drop into water.
Boil about 4 at a time, turning often, for 5 minutes. Lift out with a slotted spatula, drain briefly on a towel, and place on the baking sheet. Brush bagels with the egg yolk glaze and bake in a 400 deg.F oven for about 35 to 40 minutes, or until well browned and crusty. Cool on a rack. Makes 12.
WHOLE WHEAT BAGELS -----+-----+------ Follow basic
recipe, omitting sugar; use 3 Tbl honey instead. In
place of the flour, use 2 cups whole wheat, 1/2 cup
wheat germ, and about 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour.
Mix in all the whole wheat flour and wheat germ and 1
1/4 cups all-purpose flour before beating dough. Then
mix in about 1 1/2 cups more all-purpose flour, knead,
and finish as directed.
PUMPERNICKEL BAGELS *+* Follow basic recipe, omitting
sugar; instead use 3 Tbl dark molasses. In place of
the flour use 2 cups each rye and whole wheat and
about 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour. Add all the rye
and 1 cup each of the whole wheat and all-purpose
before beating dough. Then add remaining 1 cup of
whole wheat and about 3/4 cup more all-purpose flour,
knead, and finish as directed.
MORE BAGEL VARIETY ----+-----+------- Try adding 1/2
cup instant toasted onion to the whole wheat or basic
bagels; add it to the yeast mixture along with the
sugar and salt. Or sprinkle 1/2 tsp poppy or sesame
seed or 1/4 tsp coarse salt on each glazed bagel
before baking. Or add 1 Tbl caraway seed to
pumpernickel bagels, then sprinkle each glazed bagel
with 1/2 tsp more caraway seed before baking.
The biggest cultural event in Samoa is the Teuila Festival in September, featuring choir singing, fire-knife dancing, parades, cricket tournaments, siva (traditional dance), fautasi (longboat) racing, the Miss Samoa contest, amongst other things.
For the last several mornings, I've been hearing the yelping of puppies that sound like they are being restrained or something. I could only take it for so long. Then I would walk outside to try to find out what the fuck was going on, and it would stop. 
