Why Sometimes the Bagels Coke Like a Born Again
Saturday, August 28
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Hi, kind reader.
I'thousand a niggling late with my letter to y'all this week. Nosotros've had a lot going on at our house, and now I'm on a quick trip to Tennessee to cook some Chinese nutrient for friends. (Peculiarly if you're traveling, for the love of yourself and for your neighbor, delight mask upward and stay rubber.)
I'thousand convinced more ever that the Volume of Psalms was given to us for nearly every circumstance in life—a prayer book for the ages. Last Sunday, I preached on Psalm 22. Many of us know a bit of this psalm considering Jesus quotes from it—"My God, my God, why take yous forsaken me?". It feels equally if it'southward a psalm for this moment—until information technology doesn't. I near got bellyaching at how information technology turns repeatedly toward possibility and hope, when sometimes I'd actually rather sit in my disappointment and sadness. Only it's precisely considering of its insistence on hope that I think information technology's so valuable.
Much of the hope comes from the psalmist's repeated turns beyond himself. He makes a assuming claim on God—my God, the psalm begins. He turns to his ancestors and remembers their testimonies. He turns to his birth and his realization that, in his virtually vulnerable moment of life, at the very beginning of his days, he relied on a adult female for nourishment and on his God for existence. He turns to others, and where he calls on his siblings to praise God, I wonder if it's considering he might exist struggling to practice it himself. Notwithstanding through their shared outcry, at that place can be both solace and strength.
Afterwards Sunday's (online-only) service, a few of u.s.a. gathered in a Zoom room to catch upwardly and share; people spoke of their worries about COVID and the new school year too equally fears for the prophylactic of friends in Afghanistan. So, scrolling through my social-media feeds, I observe then many expressions of acrimony and discord, and so many feelings of abandonment and despair.
Thoughts and prayers can feel empty and hollow, except, I guess, if y'all have little else. Thoughts and prayers tin seem senseless and even callous, unless they offering some steadying ground for a shaky spirit and stability for a tender soul. Maybe thoughts and prayers can urge the states onto the next thought—how might I show upwardly concretely for a friend or a neighbour?—and the next prayer. Equally Simone Weil wrote, "Attending, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing every bit prayer." When I remember that line, I'g reminded that prayer can and should move us and hogtie us into loving action.
This is a prayer I wrote last weekend, afterward Psalm 22, every bit I sat with the testimonies and the tears of people in my congregation. Turning over these words and lines has been helpful to me, and I promise there'south something in at that place that will be helpful to yous.
Later Psalm 22
My God, my God, why have you forsaken the states?
Why have you lot left united states with our own expertise?
Why have you abased usa to our ain search results?
Why have you given u.s. over to Twitter and Facebook?
Tell us again the stories of our ancestors
Whom you accompanied, whom yous delivered,
To whom y'all gave wisdom, to whom you granted solace,
Who trusted in you, who cried out to you,
To whom you were true-blue, to whom you showed your steadfast love.
My God, my God, where are y'all?
Show yourself to us—and then once more.
Save us from the chatterers' mouths and the keyboard warriors' clatter,
Deliver usa from the inaction of the comfy and the injustice of the idle.
We are weary with grief, exhausted past suffering,
Parched by pessimism, hungry for promise.
My God, my God, draw almost to us
And remind us once more
That nosotros tin acquire from our mistakes,
That humility is embodied wisdom,
That tenderness is non weakness,
That "freedom for" is more powerful than "freedom from,"
That openheartedness is force,
That belovedness can be our balm,
That yous are hither.
My God, my God, tell us again that we vest
To you, to each other, and to the keen congregation.
Sing united states of america another song of your encompass,
And summon us into the chorus of the great congregation—
With the sun and the moon and the stars,
With the mountains and the sea,
With the oak and the maple, the zinnia and the milkweed,
With the warbler and the robin, the owl and the hawk,
With the neighbor nosotros similar and the one nosotros don't,
With the refugee and the immigrant,
With the vulnerable and the alone,
With the survivor and the seeker,
We will praise y'all, with our children and our children's children,
For you have been our salvation and y'all will exist our rescue over again.
What I'm Cooking: As a child, I rarely had a good bagel; we had acceptable bagels, and that was plenty. My mom always kept a stash of Lender's mini-bagels in the freezer, and nosotros'd pop them into the toaster, then slather them with cream cheese. It wasn't until adulthood until I had an excellent bagel, from H&H, in Manhattan. Crisp on the outside, chewy within, shedding everything topping all over, well, everything. Always toasted. Foam cheese is practiced. Bacon, egg, and cheese? Even better. With layers of smoked salmon—that makes for a special occasion.
After nosotros moved to Grand Rapids, friends in New York heard my longing for skillful bagels and shipped some to us. Then, some months agone, Angela Palumbo Ochoa, who, with her married man, Tony Ochoa, has a pocket-size, dwelling-blistering performance called the Cottage Bagel reached out to propose that maybe I might be able to find a expert bagel in Grand Rapids, because she and Tony make them.
Naturally, I was skeptical, but I also alive in hope. Then I stopped past the Ochoas' abode early ane forenoon to pick upwards some freshly baked bagels and brought them domicile to Tristan. We toasted them, carefully applied cream cheese, and tasted. Tristan looked at me later on a couple of bites. "These are really expert," he said. And he was right. They were actually, really good.
The Ochoas' bagels are smaller than y'all'd typically find in New York City, the holes are larger, and they incorporate a bit of sugar, which Montreal bagels do merely New York ones usually do not. It's almost as if a New York bagel and one from Montreal produced offspring. They bake them pretty dark and crisp on the exterior, simply they retain the pleasing chewy density on the inside. As I said, they were really, really adept.
Last month, I asked Angela and Tony whether they might be willing to give me a bagel-making lesson. Angela asked me to show up at their house on a Monday forenoon at 6 a.m., which I agreed to, even as I thought this might be the rapid cease of my bagel-making adventures. Turns out this was more nigh convenience—it would give united states time to bake, have a cup of coffee, and talk in the quiet before their kids got up—than about a doctrinally proper fourth dimension to make a bagel. Merely it'south also the correct timing if you lot want fresh-baked bagels for breakfast 2 days hence.
Angela's earliest bagel memories are of "soft, bready, blueberry bagels—and I liked foam cheese, so I liked bagels." They get-go had a New York bagel nearly a decade agone, at Tompkins Square Bagels, in the E Village. "I remember parts of the experience, but I didn't know what I should be getting out of it," she told me. Back in Grand Rapids, they institute GR Bagel, which had sold hand-rolled, boiled-then-baked bagels at the Fulton Street Farmers' Marketplace earlier opening a proper bagel store in 2012. (GR Bagel has since closed.) "The had to introduce to G Rapids what a boiled bagel was and meant," Angela said. "That's how we realized at that place was a right way to make a bagel."
Tony likes to brand things—and not merely make things, but besides obsess well-nigh how to brand them only so. For Christmas 2014, amidst a season of financial thrift, Angela gave Tony the ingredients to make homemade bagels. Those first ones were just okay. "They were all pretty flat," Tony recalled. The main issue wasn't the flavor so much every bit everything else. "Crust. Sheen. Texture. I was concerned about the structure." Mediocrity aside, a realization thrilled him: "I'd never considered that if I baked my own bagels, I could eat equally many as I want with little remorse," he said. "For me, it was joy. But I was easily enthralled."
The following year, the Ochoas moved to the Republic of Georgia for work, which gave them an opportunity to go along making bagels—a taste of home and also something to practice. "The carb scene in Georgia is plentiful and wonderful," Angela said. "But they did not have good bagels." Sometimes Tony would brand his own dough. But they likewise happened to alive upstairs from a bakery, so sometimes Tony would buy their neighbour's dough and shape them into bagels.
They connected their experimentation later on moving dorsum to the U.S. in 2017, testing and tinkering, watching YouTube videos and reading about proofing and learning about fermentation and trying dissimilar flours. Their emphases were slightly different in this time of trial and error. Tony told me that he is more rigid in his allegiance to recipes and processes (he grew up Reformed). Angela, on the other manus—"she wants to experience the dough" (she grew up Pentecostal). For Tony, getting the proofing right was fundamental. "The correct bubbling and texture—the only way we've been able to reach that is to exercise a long ferment in a refrigerated infinite," he said. For Angela, rolling has been crucial to achieving bagel perfection. "Many recipes online tell yous to make a round and poke a hole through, only rolling the dough helps develop the gluten—and it's a lot more fun," she said. "I'm still trying to get improve at it."
As we made bagels in their kitchen on that Monday, the early on-morn lite filtering through the window, I came to empathize that a bagel is its ain niggling ecosystem— yeast at play with flour and water—and it also responds to the ecosystem around it. The morning was warm. "The last 3 weeks, our bagels have been 25 to fifty per centum shorter, because the yeast has been overactive, because information technology has been hot and boiling," Tony said.
We popped our rolled and shaped bagels into the fridge to proof—for two days. When I returned on Midweek, again at 6 a.yard., we connected with boiling, seasoning, and blistering. As nosotros went through the various steps, Angela explained to me that bagel-making has taught her a new kind of attentiveness. "A loaf of breadstuff is wonderful—nothing bad on staff of life. Just an individual bagel is held and so many times. To me, that'southward function of what makes it special," she said. "And then there'due south the eating: Bagels are deadening to eat—slower than a slice of bread." A bagel has density and chewiness that asks subtly for try, for engagement. A bagel is a summons to attention in a way that a pillowy shokupan loaf or a buttery Parker House coil, delightful as they might be, does not.
Angela thinks likewise about the history of the bagel, which is a distinct storyline in the broader history of bread. "This is a food rooted in culture and history. To experience something with your hands and to engage with then many of your senses equally people take been doing for hundreds of years—information technology connects me to the history of staff of life, and that's really special," she said. "It's like if you employ butter and eat cheese—milking a cow, just once in your life, information technology changes your experience of that." (For more on the history of the bagel, its cantankerous-cultural connections, and its particular significance in the story of Poland'due south Jewish community, read The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Staff of life, by the journalist Maria Balinska.)
As we talked, we boiled batch after pocket-size batch of bagel, then dipped them in shallow bowls of everything seasoning. Angela says that Aldi sells an impressive everything, merely they ever make their own; she's non sure if the minced garlic and onion in the store-bought mix is pre-toasted and worries that it might burn if information technology is. Then nosotros put the pans of bagels into a hot oven, and so turned them, and then extracted them, then plopped the hot bagels onto cooling racks.
Tony has developed a ritual around the eating of a bagel, but information technology'south a halcyon moment that tin't be forced and that, with a house full of young children, can't e'er be summoned. The cardinal ingredients, beyond repose: adept coffee, a bagel, and a volume—"always fiction," he said. "My favorite is zombie apocalypse." He sits in a corner, sipping and munching and reading. "It's the essence of contentment. It's the fruit of our labor of brewing coffee, baking a bagel, and cultivating a safety and restful place."
Subsequently, I thought well-nigh Tony's curation of a bagel-consuming feel. Of course it'south a simple pleasure merely to scarf down a bagel toasted with cream cheese. Merely information technology somehow likewise honors this baked cosmos to savor it more than slowly and to contextualize in a ritual that honors deliberation and extended enjoyment. Later on all, you can't rush the bagel-making procedure, then why speed through the act of consuming it?
Angela and Tony's recipe for bagels appears at the end of this letter. You can too follow their bagel-making adventures—and, if yous're in Grand Rapids, order their bagels—via Instagram at @thecottagebagel.
What I'yard Growing: I'1000 too embarrassed to mail service a picture of the weedy mess that my community-garden plots have become. Amidst it all, though, things all the same flower. Last week, I put together a bouquet for friends—sunflowers, zinnia, celosia, i or 2 sad snapdragons, some basil blossoms. One delight was finding things I hadn't planted for bloom purposes just sprang up anyway. At that place was the volunteer amaranth that rose upwards amidst my tomatoes. In the g, we have some robust Canadian goldenrod in bloom equally well every bit hydrangea and as well much mint. And my broccoli rabe is bolting, which isn't great for the leaves but means that we accept pretty little yellow flowers.
At that place is so much grief in the headlines right now—and there is so much sorrow that will never make the news. I was reminded of this on Th as I talked with a friend who has poured herself into helping organizing evacuations from Transitional islamic state of afghanistan over the past couple of weeks. What we glimpse in the newspapers and online is only a fraction of the story. There is so much we don't know and can't know. And the invitation I hear over again in all this is to hold with compassion those we encounter. Let's be gentle with one another and with ourselves.
If there'south anything I tin can be holding in prayer for you lot this week, please go out a comment or send me an email (makebelievefarmer@gmail.com). And as e'er, I love hearing what you've read might be stirring up in you.
I'm so grateful we can stumble through all this together. I'll endeavour to write again presently.
Yours,
Jeff
10 Cottage Bagels
Angela and Tony Ochoa
400-425 g h2o*
9 thou active dry yeast**
45 g sugar
100 g pre-ferment (optional)
750 g unbleached bread flour (we apply King Arthur at abode)
30 m kosher common salt
Semolina flour (optional)
Toppings (seeds, cheese***, flaky salt, etc.)
For boiling:
1 T turbinado carbohydrate or molasses or brown sugar
½ t blistering soda
Tony's Everything Seasoning
ii T sesame seeds
2 T poppy seeds
1 t kosher salt
1 t stale minced or granulated garlic
i t dried minced onion
Equipment we use (much of which tin exist substituted!)
KitchenAid stand mixer with dough hook
Dough cutter
Pans/blistering sheets or board for proofing (y'all probably won't fit them all on i)
Pans/blistering sheets for blistering
1 standard large pot
Skimmer
Parchment paper
ii cooling racks
Timer
*Water depends on humidity. Dough should be on the dry/tough side. Begin with less h2o and add a bit more later if necessary.
**If doubling recipe, increase yeast to fourteen chiliad rather than eighteen.
***We beloved Kerrygold's Dubliner cheese. Anything that's not as well moist will work!
Twenty-four hour period i
1. MIX: Add to mixer with dough hook in order: water, yeast, sugar, pre-ferment (if using), flour, common salt. Mix on everyman speed—this is of import, considering the density of the dough has been known to break frail mixers—for 8 minutes. Then, exercise the window pane test if it makes you feel meliorate.
ii. DIVIDE: Give the dough a pat and tell it that it looks skillful. Use a dough cutter or tear the dough into pieces effectually 135 grams each. Salve remaining dough and refrigerate for future pre-ferment—or make an adorable infant bagel.
3. SHAPE: Dust a pan or lath with some semolina flour; alternatively, utilise parchment paper or a silpat. Take ane divided dough piece. Using your palm, flatten the dough into a rectangle/oval shape. Starting from the top, roll tightly towards you and press, eliminate air pockets, forming a serpent shape roughly x inches long. Take hold of one end of the serpent and wrap it around your hand, twisting information technology one time, grabbing the loose end with an inch overlap. Keeping it wrapped effectually your hand, press overlapped ends on counter and coil back and forth to seal.
Helpful videos for this disruptive caption:
Diana Daoheung
Claire Saffitz
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Note: your shaped bagels will expect lumpy at this point. Fear non! Time in the fridge will smooth everything over, no matter what Claire tells you!
4. PROOF: Place shaped bagels on prepared pan/board, leaving a lilliputian room in between each. Proceed shaped bagels at room temp for about xx minutes. Then place the entire lath into a make clean trash bag or encompass in plastic wrap. Identify them in the refrigerator to ascent undisturbed for 48 hours.
Day 2
Call up about your bagels all day long. Double check that you have enough cream cheese on hand.
Day iii
1. PREP: Set up oven to 500 degrees F. Make full a large pot 3/4 with water and bring to a boil on loftier heat. Get a new pan with parchment paper fix. Set ane cooling rack virtually the pot of boiling water; this is where boiled bagels will go before baked. If yous're making everything bagels, make your seasoning; if you lot're making everything, sesame, or poppy-seed bagels, pour those toppings into shallow bowls. If you lot're making cheese bagels, slice your cheese.
2. Bladder TEST: Fill a small basin with room-temperature water. Drop one bagel in the basin to check if information technology floats. If it does not, pull the bagel tray from fridge to finish proofing at room temperature. Echo float test with a new bagel every 10 mins.
iii. Eddy: When h2o is humid, add turbinado sugar and baking soda. The proofed bagels are hardly delicate at this point; you tin can work with them rapidly, just do not pull on their shape. Add as many bagels to the pot that comfortably fit—possibly four. Set timer for i½ minutes. Afterward 1½ minutes on the first side, flip bagels and boil for another ane½ minutes on their opposite side. Later boiling each bagel for a full of 3 minutes, remove with a skimmer and plop on the cooling rack. Repeat the procedure until all bagels are boiled.
iv. Flavor: While the side by side bagels are boiling, season beginning group of bagels.
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For salt bagels: Sprinkle salt of choice (not table salt! Flaky ocean common salt works) on pan where salt bagels volition get. Add desired bagels to pan and sprinkle more salt generously on top.
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For everything, sesame, or poppy-seed bagels: Douse wet bagels in seed bowls. Flip and dunk the other side.
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For cheese bagels: Add plain bagels to pan. You won't top the bagels with cheese until halfway through blistering.
five. Bake: Broil bagels for eight minutes. So rotate the pan(s). If y'all're making cheese bagels, now is the time to add some cheese on top of those bagels. Broil eight-10 more minutes, or until gold with a hard crust. Our bagels usually broil for a total of xvi-25 minutes. Remove bagels from pans immediately and identify on a cooling rack or cut board.
vi. EAT: Expect 30 minutes earlier slicing…. Or at LEAST 10 minutes if you're very excited.
Notes from Angela:
There are multiple methods for making great bagels. Subsequently years of trials, this is the route we accept settled on, though I wait it will continue to evolve. The videos shared to a higher place in Solar day ane Step 3 from Diana and Claire (my bagel heroes) are excellent tutorials providing varying stages of proofing, shaping, etc.
Our utilise of raw sugar instead of malt syrup is purposeful. We've adapted the recipe to just include what's readily accessible to the states hither in Michigan.
I just don't question the "New York water" matter.
I oasis't been to the bright NYC in 10 years, simply the side by side time I am there (which I hope will be soon), these are the start 3 places I am RUNNING to in this gild:
Black Seed Bagels
Chama Mama
Russ and Daughters
Source: https://jeffchu.substack.com/p/psalms-and-bagels
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