Bagels

Tomorrow, December 11, is National Eat a Bagel Day.

I spent much of my childhood in New Jersey, where finding a decent bagel was never a problem. I now realize that I was spoiled by the bakeries of my youth.

In my current haunts—western Massachusetts and northern Virginia—bagels are much harder to come by.

The other day I recalled that when I was a teenager living in India another American expatriate, Jane Abel, used to make her own bagels. (She made her own gefilte fish, too, but I’m not that brave!)

I decided to ask Jane for her bagel recipe.

Unfortunately, Jane has been back in the U.S. long enough to have lost her magic bagel formula. She did send me another recipe to try. She said it looked similar to the one she remembered.

The bagels I made looked far from perfect. Frankly, my shaping skills need a lot of work. The end products tasted much better than the bread-like substances that often masquerade as bagels, however.

As connoisseurs know, a true bagel is twice cooked—first boiled and then baked. Think of it as a baked dumpling. The double cooking creates a firm crust and a chewy interior.

These are indeed true bagels. If they look a little odd, please blame the cook and not the recipe. Actually, my friend Deb thinks I should call them “Bagels Rustica” and pretend I WANTED them to look this way!

The only change I might make another time (other than getting someone more talented to shape the darn things) would be to halve the sugar in the dough. These bagels are a tad sweet.

My nephew Michael was home sick from school yesterday and was thus able to sample a bite of bagel when the first batch emerged from the oven. He pronounced the bagels “awesome.”

They are best eaten fresh and warm with a dab of butter, but they are also terrific toasted the next day and smeared/schmeared with cream cheese.

Almost Jane Abel’s Indian Bagels

Ingredients:

4-1/4 cups bread flour
2 packages instant (rapid-rise) yeast
4 tablespoons raw sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1-1/2 cups lukewarm water

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl stir together 1-1/2 cups of the flour and the yeast.

In a separate bowl combine 2 tablespoons of the sugar (you will use the other 2 tablespoons later), the salt, and the water.

Stir the water mixture into the flour and yeast. Combine thoroughly at low speed on your electric mixer, scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula from time to time.

Turn up the mixer and beat the mixture for 3 minutes.

Next comes the kneading. The bread flour makes the dough very stiff so if you have a dough hook on your mixer it is best to use it rather than knead by hand. In this case add all of the remaining flour. Mix on medium speed with the dough hook for 4 to 5 minutes, stopping from time to time to redistribute the dough.

You will have VERY stiff dough—but don’t worry; it will loosen up as it rises.

If you don’t have a dough hook, add the remaining flour gradually as you knead. Kneading by hand will take 8 to 10 minutes. Again, expect very stiff dough.

Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover it with a damp dish towel, and let it rise in a relatively warm place until it puffs up a bit, 1 to 1-1/2 hours.

Divide the dough into 12 (I actually had 14) small balls, and roll them as smoothly as you can. This is not my specialty so my balls—and my bagels--were ragged. If you are good with shaping, however, you’ll do better than I did!

Use your index finger to poke a hole in the center of each ball. Gently work to make the center a bit bigger—the bagels tend to close up as they cook—and smooth the rounds into bagel shapes.

Cover the bagels again and let them rise for at least 1/2 hour.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a wide 8-quart pot bring 4 quarts of water to a boil, along with the remaining sugar.

Carefully place a few bagels in the boiling water. You should be able to boil at least 4 at a time. Not being a patient woman, I tried 7 at a time, which overcrowded them a bit so I don’t recommend it! The bagels expand as they boil.

Boil the bagels for 6 minutes, turning them with tongs halfway through; then drain them briefly and place them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment or a silicone baking mat.

Bake the bagels until they turn golden brown in spots, about 30 minutes. Repeat the boiling/baking process with your remaining bagels.

Makes 12 to 14 bagels.

Tinky's Apple-Pumpkin Scones

I know I’ve been a bit fixated on warm breakfast foods lately—probably because of the chill in the air.

These scones are so seasonal that I had to keep up the breakfast trend for one more post!

I have seldom met a scone I didn’t like, but even to my sconophilic taste these are special. You can taste and feel everything in them—the apples, the pumpkin, the spices, and of course the butter.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking power
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold sweet butter
2 small apples, cut up
1/2 cup (generous) pumpkin puree
2 tablespoons sweet cider
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
additional sugar as needed

Instructions:

Combine the sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, and spices. Cut in the butter, but be careful not to overmix. Stir the apple pieces into this mixture.

In a separate bowl, thoroughly combine the pumpkin, cider, egg, and vanilla. Add this mixture to the dry mixture and blend just to moisten the dry ingreidents. They won’t ACTUALLY get completely moist at first.

Transfer the ragged dough to a board, and knead it a few times to make the ingredients start to hold together. Shape it into 1 or 2 slightly flattened rounds (1 for large scones; 2 for small). Using a serrated knife, cut each round into 6 or 8 pieces.

Place the wedges of dough (your future scones) on a cookie sheet covered with a silicone baking mat. Allow the sheet to cool in the freezer for 1/2 hour.

While it is cooling preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Remove the scones from the freezer, sprinkle sugar generously over them, and bake them for 15 to 18 minutes, until they are a nice brown on the bottom.

Makes 6 to 16 scones, depending on size.

Bread and Roses

My roses have gone by so I had to serve Bread and Roses of Sharon!

I sang “Bread and Roses” in church yesterday in honor of Labor Day.

The words to this song came from a 1911 poem by James Oppenheim, commonly associated with a bitter textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the winter of 1912.

Legend has it that women striking in Lawrence carried signs that read, “Give us bread and roses too.”

The poem speaks in the voice of women strikers who long for a more just world in which they will be given not merely enough to eat but also enough to nourish their spirits.

“Bread and Roses” reflects the era in which it was written. It is idealistic about the role of women in society, shot through with the passion of the progressive movement, and mindful of the disparity of wealth that characterized early 20th-century America.

Here is a stanza of the song:

As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days.

The rising of the women means the rising of the race.

No more the drudge and idler,
Ten that toil where one reposes

But a sharing of life’s glories:
Bread and roses, bread and roses.

Oppenheim’s words have been set to at least two tunes. The version with which I am more familiar is the newer of the two. It was written in the 1970s by Mimi Farina. Farina started a nonprofit group in San Francisco called Bread and Roses, which brings music to people in institutions like prisons, hospitals, and rest homes.

Her version of “Bread and Roses” is performed every year at my alma mater, Mount Holyoke College, by the graduating seniors. On the day before they graduate they wind their laurel chain around the grave of Mary Lyon, the college’s founder, and sing all four verses of the song.

2009 Seniors with the Laurel Chain (Courtesy of Mount Holyoke College)

This tradition always touches me. It connects these young women to other Mount Holyoke graduates–some of whom march in the laurel parade with them every year.

It also connects even the most aristocratic of the seniors to working people everywhere. Mount Holyoke has a long tradition of training its students to reach out to others; Washington Monthly recently ranked the college second in the nation at contributing to the good of the country.

Mostly it reminds the seniors (and those who listen to them sing) that college, life, and justice are about more than just making a living–that to be happy, healthy, and good we must enrich the soul as well as the body.

Hearts starve as well as bodies.
Give us bread, but give us roses.

In honor of Labor Day, then, here is a seasonal bread recipe. I’m afraid you’ll have to supply the roses yourself! Read a book. Listen to music. Work in your garden. Walk in the woods. In short, do something that will make you happy….

Pesto Bread

This recipe is very flexible. If you are overwhelmed by your basil crop, double the pesto you add. Use all-basil or all-parsley pesto. (I only mixed them because I ran out of basil!) Use more whole-wheat flour for healthier bread. Use less for more delicate bread.

If you don’t want to braid your bread, put it in traditional loaf pans (greased, please). I braided mine because my friend Anna and her daughter Maija were around to help.

But don’t forget the roses!

Ingredients:

for the pesto:

1 generous tablespoon pine nuts (or walnuts or pecans if you’re out of pine nuts)
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup mixed basil and parsley leaves, packed
enough extra-virgin olive oil to moisten the basil (about 1/4 cup)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

for the bread:

1 packet active dry yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup hot water
6 cups flour (I used 1-1/2 cups King Arthur Flour white whole wheat and the rest KAF all-purpose), plus a bit more for kneading
1 teaspoon salt
1 recipe pesto
a sprinkling of cornmeal

Instructions:

First, prepare your pesto. Place the nuts, garlic, and salt in a small grinder or a blender, along with some of the herb leaves. Add a little bit of olive oil, and pulverize. Continue adding herb leaves and oil until you have transformed all of the leaves into a paste. Stir in the cheese and set aside.

Next, proof the yeast in the lukewarm water in a small bowl, along with the sugar. This will take about 5 minutes.

Combine the milk and hot water and make sure that the combination is lukewarm (if it isn’t heat it briefly on the stove). In a large separate bowl, combine the flour and salt. Briskly stir in the dissolved yeast and the liquids; then stir in the pesto.

Place the dough on a lightly greased or floured surface, put a little oil on your hands, and knead the dough for about 8 minutes, until it feels just right. You may add a little more flour as you knead, but try not to add too much.

Transfer the dough to a greased bowl and cover it with a damp towel. Let it rise until it puffs up and just about doubles in bulk. This will probably take an hour or more.

Gently deflate the dough with your hands, and cut it in two with a serrated knife.

Place each half in turn on an oiled board, and shape it into a rectangle. Cut the rectangle in three at every spot except the very top so that you can braid it (I know I’m not phrasing this very elegantly, but the photo below should help). Braid the bread.

Anna prepares to braid.

Place each braid on a cookie sheet on which you have dusted cornmeal. Allow the braids to rise again until they have doubled in bulk–about an hour.

Bake the braids in a preheated 350-degree oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until they are a light golden brown. Makes 2 braids.

Maija concentrates on braiding.

Viv and Ethel (and Always Lucy)

Vivian Vance (Kansas Historical Society)

The woman fellow character actress Mary Wickes called “the best second banana in the business” would have turned 100 on Sunday, July 26. Vivian Vance was born Vivian Roberta Jones in 1909 in Cherryvale, Kansas.

According to biographers Frank Castelluccio and Alvin Walker, it always bothered Vance that she was inextricably linked in the public mind with frumpy landlady Ethel Mertz in the situation comedy I Love Lucy.

They quote her as saying, “When I die, there will be people who send Ethel flowers. I’ll get to heaven and someone will say, ‘Hi, Ethel! I see you are still in re-runs!’”

They also chronicle her ambivalent relationship with Lucy star Lucille Ball. Ball was at once Vance’s closest friend and a source of resentment. Playing second fiddle doesn’t sit easily on the ego. Never a complete professional success before or after her collaborations with Ball, Vance understandably longed to be a star on her own. She wanted to be free of Lucy and free of Ethel.

If Vance could look back on her career today, however (she died in 1979), history might show her the value of her work. I Love Lucy paved the way for almost all television comedies that followed it, both in terms of technique and in terms of narrative.

It also gave viewers an eternal model of supportive friendship. Lucy and Ethel were the forerunners of many TV gal pals to come, including the eponymous heroines of Laverne & Shirley, all of Charlie’s Angels, and Cybill and Maryann of Cybill.

When my friend Teri Tynes and I used to drop in on each other across the courtyard of our Austin, Texas, apartment complex, the Casa del Rio, we liked to refer to ourselves as Mary and Rhoda (in homage to the Mary Tyler Moore Show). We could just as easily have called ourselves Lucy and Ethel. Their relationship epitomized the comfort, companionship, and adventurous spirit we felt with each other and sensed in these television comrades.

One of Vivian Vance’s frustrations was that she was often called upon to react in I Love Lucy rather than to act. It was Ethel’s grimacing face that told us that Lucy was about to do something outrageous, Ethel’s careful listening that gave Lucy a chance to expound on her latest scheme.

Reaction is a large part of friendship—and a large part of great acting. So on this anniversary of Vivian Vance’s birth let’s give second bananas everywhere their due. By the time the banana bread comes out of the oven no one can tell where the first banana left off and the second banana took over.



Second Banana Bread

This recipe comes from another Lucy/Ethel Mary/Rhoda friend, my graduate-school housemate Sara Stone. Sara is probably the most generous person I know. In the last year of my doctoral program I was convinced I had only a couple of weeks to go on my dissertation. Sara invited me to stay with her until it was finished. It took NINE MONTHS! Sara never complained; she just gave me unconditional support and shelter (not to mention grocery money). And she can cook, too! We all need friends like Sara.

Of course, I’m still not entirely sure which of us was Lucy and which Ethel.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 cup ripe mashed bananas (about 3 bananas)
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Instructions:

Grease a standard loaf pan. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Stir in the bananas, and then beat in the eggs. Beat in the baking soda and salt; then gently stir the flour into the butter mixture. Add the pecans if desired.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out dry. (Sara likes her bread a bit mushier than this, but my family likes it firm.) In my oven I tend to bake it for an hour, then turn off the oven and leave it for another 15 minutes or so—but by all means test your bread and YOUR oven.

Cool the loaf on a rack for 20 minutes; then release it onto the rack to finish cooling.

Makes 1 loaf.