With impending doom

I don't think I've anything significant to say today. It's just hit Sunday and I'm lying in bed listening to the rain, feeling the wet air breezing through the window. It's nice, especially when compared to other heat-laden alternatives. Still though, while this may all appear calming to you, if I were to characterize the mood of these past few days, well, I'd have to settle on the adjective restless. With restlessness generally comes sporadic moodiness, an inability to formulate thoughts properly, so....

I suppose I'll talk about a dream then. It's a rare one, as my dreams of late have been rather mundane - there was some nightmare involving a seaweed salad and family fight (literal) awhile ago, but that's nothing new...family, after all, is always stressful. Moving on though. Fortunately or unfortunately for me, the dream I'm going to talk about today had nothing to do with family. In fact, I'm fairly certain that everyone in the dream with me was a stranger, although that didn't make the impact of the dream any less severe. If I were to break it down into some sort of plot line, I'd say that the dream centered around being attacked by Godzilla while shopping in a grocery store. That's not the bad part though. Godzilla attacked the same supermarket twice in this dream, and I just happened to be in said supermarket during both of these attacks.

I survived the first attack and was on my way to surviving the second one (despite the slow motion crawling away on some grassy field, from a first-person perspective like in a video game, using only my arms because my legs were paralyzed by fear and weighing me down). All seemed well, until I accidentally led a group of people into an alcove of some old building, effectively trapping us all in there while Godzilla approached. We were all hiding under the floorboards of this alcove in fear, my mind frantically trying to think of solutions, when the sound of his heavy snorting loomed over us. His head and saliva-dripping jaws had entered the alcove above us with impending doom, and he knew we were there, oh ho ho, he knew. It was at that point that I jolted awake. 

I actually woke up with a physical reaction, that of uncontrollable shaking. In fact, to emphasize my horror, I accidentally bumped into a sleeping Pinky during the waking process and yelled out in surprise. I guess my foggy mind thought somehow that Godzilla had joined me in bed or something. I don't know if this dream was some nightmare about leadership or what, but whatever it was, I fucked up majorly and led people to their deaths. I think I was shaking over that fact more so than the fear. How could I be so stupid, running into a corner like that? I told them not to follow me, damn it, so whose fault is it, really? 

Now, to relate this all to the food (as I am oft wont to do). Are you ready?

As you might have noticed, I've made bagels before on this blog. At that time, I followed mainly the Peter Reinhardt recipe (which takes 2-3 days), and while the bagel-making wasn't excessively difficult, it did yield bagels with some...issues. I was a bit mum at the time (because I didn't know better, oh how misled I was!) about the issues, but after discovering this recipe, I'm all for re-analyzing. So what did I find troubling about these "Reinhardt 2-day bagels?" 

One. At first, I loved how excessively chewy they were, but at some point (after the desert of bagel drought had been quenched by the first rain), it began to dawn on me that the chew was just too much. Not only did I feel like I was just tearing off the bread like a rabid hyena on a tough hide, but the issue was also compounded by the element of time - after 3 days, the bagels lost chew and flavor, became stale, and did not reheat well. Seriously, no amount of toasting could bring these suckers back to life.  Two. I also came to realize, while packing lunches, that the Reinhardt bagels were so chewy that they couldn't handle anything besides cream cheese. As someone who likes bagel sandwiches, this became a problem (any semblance of deli meat or egg and sausage would slip right out).

So, sad to say, as much as I like chew, perhaps I was looking for something a little more familiar, something more like a Bruegger's bagel (by the way, respect to Bruegger's for not making a gluten-free bagel - they tried to, but realized that a bagel without gluten is well...ridiculous). A bagel that could stand-up to deli meat, that would actually puff up properly when boiled and baked, that didn't take me so much time. Something that was chewy but still bready, but not so bready as the bagels you find at Panera, or god forbid, the ones at Safeway (I tried the Safeway bagels by the way, they were truly terrible, just stale bread in donut-shaped form).  

Now, bagel cravings hit me hard sometimes, and they've recently been more hard-hitting than usual. I didn't feel like devoting the time to making "2-day" bagels that were ultimately unsatisfying, and Bruegger's wasn't available. I browsed around on the internet and came across this post on the Sophisticated Gourmet.  

This lady has her bagel shizz down. Now, to clarify, I didn't actually follow her recipe to a tee, rather I adapted it to better fit my needs. I added barley malt syrup to the boiling process because I like that flavor, changed the flour amount as I saw fit, altered the type of toppings, parts of the method of assembly...hell, it's almost an entirely new recipe altogether. I did, however, use her method to activate the yeast and applied the 10 minute rest times throughout the process. I've actually never activated yeast part-way with water before and just let it sit undisturbed. I'm not sure it makes any difference, the not stirring at first, but I followed her instructions in that regard and it yielded these amazing bagels. If anything, her post inspired me to turn on the oven in the summer and bake bagels. And, it only took me 3 hours. 3 literal hours, that's it! 

After I made these bagels, I felt like I was on top of the world. They're very, very, extremely satisfying. Balanced chew and breadiness. Not only that, but they also reheat well and make great bagel sandwiches. In this house, these suckers weren't even around long enough to even feel the effects of time. In fact, these bagels were so Bruegger's-like that I felt so misled, so betrayed by my Reinhardt 2-day bagel attempt. Reinhardt's recipe is good, just not for me (the picky bagel consumer). Karma, perhaps, for just as I misled the humans towards certain death by Godzilla in my dream, the internet misled me into thinking that the Reinhard 2-day bagel was the only "true" way to make an excellent bagel. Not true. And hah! Here's to me tying it all in.  

3-Hour Everything Bagels

makes 7-8 bagels

2 heaping teaspoons active dry yeast

1 1/2 TB granulated sugar

1 1/4 C warm water

3 C bread flour +  1/4 C for kneading

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

olive oil

1 TB barley malt syrup

for the topping: equal parts of caraway seeds, black sesame seeds, and sea salt

Mix together your active dry yeast and granulated sugar in a bowl. Add to it 1/2 C warm water and let sit for 15 minutes or until frothy (do not stir). While you are waiting for the yeast, sift together 2 1/2 C of the bread flour and all of the salt in another bowl (this means that you will have 3/4 C bread flour reserved for kneading).

When the yeast is frothy, add to it the remaining 3/4 C warm water and stir it all together with a fork. Then add in flour-salt mixture, stirring with a fork, until a soft dough forms. Knead this soft dough until it is stiff and firm and forms a cohesive ball, incorporating the remaining 3/4 C bread flour. This should take 10-15 minutes of kneading. You'll know you are finished when the dough bounces back when pressed on. Roll the dough into a ball, place in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise in a warm,d damp place for at least an hour, until doubled in size.

Once the dough has doubled, punch it down and let rest for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, divide the dough into 7-8 equal pieces. Then, using one hand on a flat surface, roll the ball in place in a clockwise fashion until a smooth, crease-less, and perfect sphere is formed. In each sphere, poke a hole in the center and widen the hole it until it is 1/3 the diameter of the ball (forming that classic bagel shape). Let each raw bagel rest, covered with plastic wrap, for another 10 minutes.

While you are waiting, bring a large pot of water (~10 C of water) with 1 TB of barley malt syrup to a boil. Once at a boil, lower to a simmer. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

After 10 minutes, drop the raw bagels into the simmering water (however many you are comfortable boiling at a time) and let boil on one side for 1.5 minutes. Then flip the bagels over and let boil on the other side for another 1.5 minutes. The longer you let the bagels boil, the chewier they will be. After having boiled on both sides, remove the bagels from the water with a slotted spoon, place on parchment paper, and immediately sprinkle with your topping of choice. Bake for 20 minutes until toasty brown on top.