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Sourdough bagels!

Wow!

An installment in the series "I didn't bother writing down what I did because I didn't expect much on the first try, but then the results turned out fantastic and I wished I had the recipe."

I think maybe bagels are ideal for sourdough, because sourdough breads tend to be denser and chewier, exactly what you're looking for in a good bagel.  It turns out that sourdough bagels may also be a more convenient choice for breakfasts, because you must shape them the night before.   Most recipes for yeasted bagels, on the other hand, call for shaping the bagels just after the first rise and only a few minutes before boiling; this works fine if you have a bread machine, of course (here's my recipe) but still the shaping step might add just a bit too much complexity to a typical weekday morning.

I went to this website for advice on the technique, and adapted the recipe in ways that seemed sensible given that I had a bread machine, a whole cup of starter, and a little bit of experience.  The website stressed high-protein flour, so I decided to use some bread flour rather than making 100% whole wheat bagels this time, and add some gluten to be safe.  I had just refreshed my starter and that evening, after pulling off some for the fridge and some for the next loaf of sandwich bread, I had a bit more than a cup left.

(Finally caught a clue and started refreshing the starter in a Pyrex 4-cup measure so I can see how much I have.)

(When I started doing that, I noticed something that should have been obvious:  Refreshed sourdough varies widely in density, a possible source in variation in my results considering that I typically measure by volume.)

I scraped most of the starter into my bread machine pan -- about a cup, as I said, of fairly bubbly starter -- and added one cup of bread flour and one cup of whole wheat flour.  I added about a tablespoon of gluten, three tablespoons of sugar, a teaspoon and a half of salt, and a teaspoon of olive oil.  I was shooting for a "standard" bagel so didn't mess with honey or molasses or any other kind of flavoring.  I decided not to add any water at this point, figuring to err on the side of stiffness.  I put that in the bread machine and set it to produce dough, and then stuck around.

Yes, I'm aware that next time I should be weighing all these ingredients.  I really thought this would just be the "let's see what happens" bagel recipe.

The machine labored and when I took a look inside during the knead cycle, it was obvious that water was required.  I'm sorry to say that I just splashed some in.  I guess it was about two or three tablespoons.  When I came back the dough looked all right, denser than bread dough like it's supposed to, so I left it alone after that.  I suppose if you mixed and kneaded by hand or in a stand mixer you would be able to adjust the hydration as you went; in any case, read some descriptions of what bagel dough is supposed to be like so you can make the necessary adjustments.   

I stopped the machine after the first rise but before it could knead the dough down again, and turned the dough out.  I knew at that moment I had something that could very well be successful, because the dough was firm and elastic and not at all sticky; I didn't even have to flour my board.  I cut it into 7 pieces and shaped it into bagels by the "rope" method.  I had to work pretty hard to seal the ends because the dough was so un-sticky, and ended by dipping them in water and really squishing and kneading them together.

I put a sheet of baking parchment on a baking sheet, sprayed the parchment lightly with cooking spray, arranged the bagels on the parchment, lightly sprayed the bagels, and covered them with plastic wrap to keep them from drying out.  Then I left the bagels at room temperature overnight.  The thermostat was at 71F, and I just found it really hard to believe that they would rise enough in the fridge.  But I didn't want to warm them because the rise would be about 8 hours.

In the morning they didn't seem to have changed much, which I figured meant I had made the right decision.  I preheated the oven to 500 F and put a heavy pan on the bottom rack; meanwhile I set a pot to boil.  Then I took a shower and got dressed.  When I came down the water was boiling and the oven was preheated.  I added 2 T of sugar to the water, because the sourdough website suggested it -- I have no idea what it's supposed to accomplish -- and boiled the bagels in two batches.  They sank at first and floated within a minute just as they were supposed to. I floated them in the boiling water for 1 minute on each side and then transferred them to a lightly sprayed baking sheet.  When they were all on the sheet I put them in the oven on the center rack, and poured a half cup of water in the hot pan on the bottom to create steam.

They baked 15 minutes, by which time they were starting to brown, and then I transferred them to a wire rack to cool.

Beautiful, just beautiful, with a crisp exterior made even more lovely by toasting, and a chewy middle.  I don't know if you would be satisfied with them if, say, you were a native New Yorker, but they were miles ahead of grocery store bagels and in the same league, I think, with wheat bagels from a chain like Bruegger's.   (Not quite as pleasurable as a fresh-baked bakery salt bagel, uncontaminated with whole wheat flour, would be, but whaddayagonnado.)  I am resisting the urge to go eat another one just so I can tell you more details about it.  There is a nice tang from the sourdough, and it's really hard to believe there's no yeast in these.

I'm not promising perfect results the first time if you do what I did -- my measuring was really vague here, and as I noted, sourdough starter is fickle stuff -- but be willing to try it, and to experiment and tweak.  The fact that you can do all but a few minutes' work the night before is a strong plus with this recipe and method.  I will definitely try to repeat this the next time I refresh sourdough, and when I do I'll keep better records.

UPDATE:  In this post I repeat the recipe with careful measurements.

Why have I been spending so much money on packaged cookies?

Per Oscar's Civil War history activity, the children are joyfully gobbling up homemade hardtack for their afternoon snack.

It didn't even cost me any labor, since Oscar made the stuff.

I am pretty sure that a cup and a half of flour, a teaspoon of salt, and a half cup of water costs less than fifteen Oreos.  I think it maybe even makes less mess.  Even if you consider the tablespoon of molasses I gave each child to dip their hardtack in.

Hmph.

(mix flour, salt, and water in bowl, knead in bowl, roll out to 1/2 inch thickness on ungreased cookie sheet, cut into squares, poke holes with skewer, bake 25 minutes at 375 degrees.)

Okay, they're asking for gummy bears now.  Seems a little bit more normal.

Morning organizing project.

I haven't attacked anything around here in a long time, and woke up early to sleeping children, so I decided to try to put together an organized meal planning/grocery shopping binder.

You would think I would already have this, wouldn't you, given my detailed menu planning algorithm?  I don't.  I have all the necessary stuff, but it's either saved in files on my computer or scattered around the house.  Let's pull it together today.

First thing I did was print off my aisle-by-aisle grocery list and stick it in a page protector for reference and as a photocopy master.   (Here's a file so you can see what it looks like:  Grocery list.ods  -- Warning, it's probably not useful to you as is unless you shop at the same South Minneapolis Cub Foods that I do) 

Next thing I did was to get out the box in which I have been saving weekly menu plans for a long time, and sorted them out from the other random stuff I've tossed in there (printed recipes, receipts, junk) along the way.  I counted them:  I have about 30 weeks of menus.  

The next step is to mine data from the menu plans.  More later...

11:11 AM.  I have mined data from my menu plans.  

It is interesting to see which meals repeat frequently.  In thirty weeks of menu plans, we saw repeats of

• Some kind of meat or burgers on the grill (8)
• Emergency chili (6)
• Homemade pizza of some kind or another (5)
• Spaghetti and meatballs (5)
• Rice-cooker rice and beans (5)
• French-style split pea soup with ham in the crock pot (5)
• Embellished scrambled eggs (5)
• Taco salad (4)
• Chile-cheese egg puff (4)
• Vegetarian Mexican-flavor lasagna (3)
• Salmon patties (3)
• Ground beef gyros (3)
• Egg salad sandwiches (3)
• Spicy tomato soup (3)
• Chicken mole enchilada casserole (2)
• Skillet chicken fajitas (2)
• Pasta salad with tuna, capers, tomatoes, mint (2)
• Minestrone soup (2)
• Green fettucine with squash, sage, chickpeas, onion, parmesan (2)
• Judy's taco soup (2)
• Stuffed peppers (2)

There are a few other obvious-to-me family favorites that didn't appear on the list at all, don't know why.  Calzones, for one thing, and spinach-ricotta pie, and chicken-and-noodles; hummus and cut vegetables, and chicken-pepper-cashew stirfry with hoisin sauce.  But this sampler should help.  I printed it out.  And then I threw away the piles of meal plans!

11:43 AM.  Actually, before I threw them away, I also mined a list of lunches I've brought to feed 6-10 kids and 2-3 moms with minimal fuss and complaining.  That list (for the 30 weeks) is shorter.  

• Taco soup
• Tuna, pasta, olives, tomatoes, peas (assemble your own)
• Summer sausage, pickles, fruit, salad greens
• Seasoned cooked ground beef, pitas, sliced cucumber, yogurt
• Canned Amy's alphabet soup, served variously with crackers, pretzels, or homemade bread
• Mini bagels with cream cheese, olives, salami (assemble your own); lox for the moms; grapes
• Pasta with chili and cheese or just cheese; fruit
• Hot dogs baked in sauerkraut, served with or without sauerkraut in buns; fruit
• Mini pizzas with sauce, cheese, pepperoni, olives (assemble your own); applesauce
• Baked potatoes with yogurt, ham cubes, and cheese (assemble your own); canned beets
• Sloppy joes, English muffins, canned fruit
• Salad with choice of toppings from salsa, cheese, corn, beans, chicken, yogurt, tortilla chips
• Tuna salad with mayo, pickles, and olives, served with crackers
• Pasta with red meat sauce and cheese or just cheese, green beans
• Frozen pizzas and applesauce
• Plain rice, chicken, and soy sauce with frozen mixed vegetables

Hannah has perfected a crispy salmon loaf that all ten children love, but that's her territory...

I haven't disappeared, but I had a busy weekend.

With the help of a phalanx of volunteers, I ran the homeschool co-op's annual children's clothing swap this weekend.  It's a nice service for any parish that has lots of growing families.  Here's how we do it:

• People have two days to drop stuff off at the church -- used kids' clothes mostly, but also maternity clothes, baby stuff, unopened formula and diaper packages.  Shoes too, and coats.   No damage, no stains -- only good condition things.  
• Then volunteers come in and spend a few hours sorting the clothes by size and folding them and displaying them on tables.  
• People can come in and look over the clothing when they drop things off, while the folding is going on; or they can come before and after Mass on Saturday and Sunday.   Anyone can take anything they want, for their kids or grandkids or friends' kids or even for their favorite charity, for free.
• After the last Mass on Sunday, more volunteers bag whatever's left and tote it to charities.  Little kids' stuff and maternity clothes go to a local crisis pregnancy center.  Most of the rest goes to whatever charity happens to be open and accepting mixed donations on Sunday afternoons, usually Goodwill.  This year someone offered to keep things overnight so she could take them to a different local charity, which was fine with me.

I scored 6 boxes of clothes for my kids and myself (yay maternity swap), including snow pants and rain boots and some really great sweaters.  After a few years of this, I know which labels of clothes are going to last, and I take lots of those, always thinking several years ahead.  Oh, AND I GOT A WHOLE BOX OF CLOTH DIAPERS.   I can't believe someone else didn't take them first.  (There were two boxes, and one went right away, but the other box was still there at the end.)

I'm not sure which part of the service is more important to the families in the parish -- the free clothes, or the incentive to clean out their closets every year.  Maybe this year, with the economy how it is, it really was the free clothes.  Normally about two-thirds of the total haul goes to charity; this year it was more like one-third.  On the other hand, this year I stressed "please don't donate damaged stuff" much more firmly in the pre-swap bulletin announcements, and perhaps the overall quality of the goods was higher.  We didn't throw nearly as much stuff away because it was too damaged to donate.

Sourdough FAIL

So I attempted to substitute sourdough into my oatmeal bread and the result was like a bread pan full of porridge when the machine finished.  Weird.  I transferred it to the oven and baked it longer and it was still very goopy.   We fed it to the kids for bedtime snack with honey on it and then we threw the rest out; I probably should have tried to make French toast out of it.  Oops.

And then I believed the instructions that came with my sourdough starter, the ones that said "any flour" could be used, and tried to make a hand-shaped bread out of 100 percent rye flour.  Well.   I let the batter sit all day and it barely rose.  I hand kneaded the dough for ten minutes and it was stiff, sticky, and not at all elastic, kind of like cookie dough.  I let the ball of dough sit overnight and it was not a whole lot bigger in the morning.  I shaped it into a dough turd baguette and let it sit on a greased baking pan all day and it still didn't get any bigger or show any sign of elasticity.  "Well, I might as well bake it," I thought, and baked it, and removed from the oven a hard, dense, chewy monster.  You can barely slice it.  I tried some anyway.

Here's the thing though.  I can't stop eating it, slathered with local Hope Creamery butter.  The bread is awful.  And yet I have eaten, um, many slices.

Possible causes.

 -- I am 22 weeks pregnant and pregnant women will eat anything

 -- That's damn good butter

 -- I just can't bear to let it go to waste

 -- Sourdough that has developed for 2 days is tasty no matter what the texture

Anyway, next time I put some wheat in, I swear.

Somali cuisine.

Kind of a neat article from The Heavy Table on Somali cuisine in Minneapolis.  At least 40,000 Somali people live in Minnesota, the largest concentration in the U. S., and many are in Minneapolis.  The article, which is a profile of a local restauranteur, includes a recipe for mango curry chicken using ordinary kitchen ingredients (assuming that you, like yours truly, consider mangoes and coconut milk to be ordinary ingredients; if not, perhaps you're reading the wrong blog).

It's messing with my head: A twenty-two-weeks report.

I had that dream again -- the dream where I'm surrounded by piles and piles of food, and I have to eat it all.  It was a new version, one in which I was staying in a hotel room with no fridge, and there were bowls of udon noodles, quart jars of vegetable soup, and platters of chips and fresh salsa sitting around on every available surface.  The precise reason wasn't clear to me, but somehow in the dream I was supposed to finish it all off before the stuff spoiled in the heat.

I woke up feeling bloated.  It  took me a while of being awake before I felt I could have breakfast.

* * *

One thing I haven't written very much about, since I became pregnant, is how well I'm managing to stay away from the cliff-edge of eating disorder.  One reason I haven't written very much about it is that I'm not actually doing very well, or at least, I'm not feeling very secure and I'm not quite sure how to put it into words, or maybe I'm afraid to express it honestly.

Still, I wrote so much about my successes last year, it seems only fair to report on the hard parts, the failures, now.

Yeah, pregnancy has made it hard. 

* * *

It's not that my weight has spiralled out of control.  I put on a couple of pounds quickly very early on, and have tracked the what-you're-supposed-to-gain chart pretty closely since then -- basically, I'm following a parallel line about two pounds higher than the range I'm supposed to be in.   In other words, I've gained a bit more weight than the current standard medical model would suggest I should, but not much more, and the gap isn't getting any wider.  Rationally, I know it's just fine.

But I am having a hard time staying rational about it.

* * *

Look, I know I'm pregnant and that pregnant women are supposed to gain weight.  But somehow there is this twang of anxiety at the numbers going up and up.  I literally have to keep doing the math in my head, lik this:

I've gained 16 pounds.  Oh yuck, that sounds so horrible.  It's more than I'm supposed to have gained by twenty-two weeks.

The upper end of the range says I should only have gained a maximum of 14 pounds by now.  Why can't I get below the upper end of the range?  I must be slipping.  This is awful.

OK, calm down, even the lower end of the range is 11 pounds.  I've only gained 5 pounds more than the minimum I'm supposed to gain.  This is not a crisis...

(repeat)

My brain goes through this, unbidden, several times a day.

* * *

A lot of it is baby and bustline, both welcome filling-out of my frame.  The rest of it seems to be going on below the waist.  My collarbones and arms still have definition, but... I can't stop thinking about how my thighs feel in my jeans.  Every time I slide behind the steering wheel of my car I notice the tightness of my pants on my thighs.  Every time I feel that I make a mental note:  I should be more careful, my legs are getting fat.  And then the rational part of me corrects that:  Women are supposed to put on extra fat stores when they are growing a new baby.  Thighs are an excellent place to put them, probably the best place as it's waistline and upper-body fat that is supposed to be a marker for heart disease and early death -- better to be a pear than an apple and all that.  So quit worrying, it's all fine.  But that doesn't stop me from thinking it again when I slide out from behind the steering wheel.

* * *

Sometimes I think it's simply seeing these numbers on the scale again, numbers that were so welcome on the way down last year.  My first thought is often "I can't believe I've gotten up this high."  And then I remember I'm supposed to see that number; I'm supposed to wind up somewhere between 133 and 143, and logically I have to pass through all the numbers between here and there on the way.

* * *

There's other things too that trigger awful feelings.  The baby is starting to compress my internal organs -- I know I have a little less room in my stomach, for example, than I used to.  Smaller amounts of food make me feel fuller.  And that full sensation, that "oops I ate too much" sensation --- well, it's a bad sensation for the recovering bulimic, let's just put it that way.  I have to go away and list to myself what I had on my plate to prove to myself that I have not been overeating, to remind myself that what I had was healthful, that so much of it was vegetables and fruit, for instance.  

* * *

I keep trying to go back to my "signal breakfast," the single boiled egg and the glass of tomato juice.  And of course I keep being unsatisfied by this, because for pete's sake, I'm almost 5 months pregnant and that is not enough food for a 5-months-pregnant woman to eat after a full night's sleep, of COURSE I'm hungry again by midmorning.  But I still feel like that extra slice of buttered toast, or that cup of cottage cheese, is me "giving in" rather than feeding myself what I need.  I know better, but I am having a very hard time feeling better.

* * *

Don't worry too much about me physically. I am pretty sure I *am* eating enough, and that the food I eat is all very good and very high-value food.  I eat lots and lots of green leafy vegetables, a habit from weight loss that is well adapted to pregnancy.  I have increased my intake of meat, especially beef and oily fish.  I'm eating lots of fresh berries right now while they're still in season, and all my bread and crackers and pasta and cereal are whole grain.  I don't desire milk to drink, but I eat yogurt, cream, and cheeses daily.  I craved ice cream at the very beginning and enjoyed it thoroughly.  Other than some tiredness that seems to respond well to an herbal iron supplement, I have no symptoms of deficiency:  not a single leg cramp yet this pregnancy, no swelling except once when I was hiking at high altitude.  Very little nausea, even.  And, of course, the weight gain is right about where it should be.  

* * *

The hard part is just accepting it as a good thing, and not something to be feared.

Iowa vs. Minnesota.

Minnesota wins.

Although I don't think I'm interested in any kind of corn dog.

If it's Tuesday, it must be muffins. Definitely not cookies.

This morning:  chocolate chip coconut pecan.  "Again?  We had those last week!" I asked Mark, a little bit incredulously, after I had requested his input (incidentally, it took me several years of marriage to learn that asking my spouse's input about the menu leads to a certain expectation that said input ought to, you know, have some effect on what I decide to make.  I keep forgetting this important insight, and I still slip up and ask for input from time to time).

"Hon, you are the only one around here with the 'we can't eat the same food twice in a row' complex.  They were good muffins.  Let's have them again."

Really I was thinking "I made those for the kids' tea.  What kind of degenerate person eats chocolate chips for breakfast?" but decided not to verbalize that.  Until now.

Last week I told the kids they were "chocolate chip cookie muffins."   It's what came into my head naturally; a while ago I dubbed another kind of muffin "oatmeal cookie muffins" in an attempt to make them sound more attractive, and also because they contain oats, raisins, cinnamon and cloves, and molasses.  Anyway, there were exactly six "chocolate chip cookie muffins left over after breakfast, so I thought:  Perfect, I have to feed a snack to six children this afternoon at Hannah's.

When it was four o'clock or so and time for tea snack, I announced that I had chocolate chip cookie muffins, plus apples or whatever else I had (don't really remember), which brought several children running.  I handed out the muffins and busied myself preparing something else in the kitchen; a moment later I heard a loud altercation behind me.

Perplexed, I turned around and saw that the altercation was coming from Hannah's four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, who was screaming at me in utter, red-faced rage.  I honestly could not make out what she was saying.  "Hazel!  Calm down -- what's wrong?"  Hannah wryly translated:  having been promised something called chocolate-chip-cookie-something-or-other and being handed a muffin was, um, unacceptable.  Or the last straw or something.  To say the least.

Now let me preface this by writing that after nearly 9 years of bringing our families together one or two days a week, Hannah and I have established a comfortable pattern of responding to each other's children.  So in that kind of a situation, I get to decide how to respond -- we mostly suppress our impulses to jump in and whisk the child away and insist that she apologize.  

Hazel is a sweet little girl, and it had been a long day, and frankly I was surprised (and admittedly kind of amused) by the unforeseen result of my muffin-naming.   (I mean -- you give a kid a chocolate chip cookie muffin, you don't expect apoplexia.  At least I don't.  Maybe I should.  I don't know.)  So I sat down beside her and said "What a mix-up!" and explained why I named the muffins "chocolate chip cookie muffins."  She sniffled and hiccuped and tried the muffin. I don't remember, she may even have apologized to me.  I don't think she liked the muffin very much.  But everything did turn out okay in the end.

Where am I going with this?  I don't know, but the chocolate chip cookie muffins are done now and I can take them out of the oven.  Today I'm leaving the muffins at home and bringing applesauce.  I didn't make it myself, so I know it's safe.

Autumn is coming.

Melissa surprised me yesterday by bringing apples picked from a local apple orchard for the children's tea.  Good ones, too -- a crunchy, sweet, light green variety called Ginger Gold, and another green-blushing-to-red, tender-fleshed sweet one -- don't remember the name.

"You're kidding -- apples are ripe already?!"

"Not many but some.  We went to pick raspberries, and they said we could try apples off the tree and if we found some that were ripe, pick more." 

 (I love the bounty of apple orchards.  Pick one, take a bite, finish it if you like or throw it on the ground and look for a more auspicious tree.)

I'll give it a few more weeks, I think, even though some of the early apples are my favorites.  Most of the year you go around eating Granny Smiths and Fujis from the grocery store, and they're pretty good, you know, the default fruit, nice with peanut butter or a slice of Tilsit cheese, but nothing really special.  And then autumn comes, and you pick apples from the apple orchard and -- wow!  It's like a completely different fruit.  Every variety is like a completely different fruit.  Mind-blowing, how good the orchard apples can be in September and October.  

I think I've found a recipe for Sunday-morning breakfasts this autumn:  Kristin's Non-Traditional Dutch Apple Pancake.  A little bit of sautéing, a little bit of baking, and you're good to go.