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It’s alive. IT’S ALIVE!
What a wonderful Friday this is. The Wizard of Oz grade windstorm from yesterday has cleared out most of the leaves from my yard (in the words of Homer J.: WOOHOO!). I’ve got half a day at work, not by choice, but by corporate design (double WOOHOO!) And for the war whoop trifecta, Friday is Bagel Day at work and it’s my turn to bring them in.
Being raised by two Queens natives, bagels are a cornerstone of my dietary habits. Spare me your chides about calories and carbs (I follow Garfield’s advice that the word "diet" is spelled "die" with a T). Bagels are just about perfect in every way. Durable, portable, great plain, buttered, cream cheesed, made into pizzas or sandwiches, superb teething toys for babies, there’s very little these concrete doughnuts can’t pull off. Not to get biblical on you (I actually looked this up here) the Israelites ate a small round thing called manna that clung to the bushes. By my logic, you can’t hang a loaf of bread on a shrub without a hole in it, so bagels must have been the Old Testament’s answer to eating well. And keeping clean bread around.
"…and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey." (Exodus 16:31). Bite into a good whole wheat bagel and tell me I’m lying. (Wow, I never thought I’d find myself quoting the Good Book here. But such is my passion for bagels).
The trick is finding a good bagel. A good bagel has a firm outer skin formed by boiling them briefly in water before baking. If you walk into a bagel shop and don’t see something akin to a giant cauldron of steaming water, leave. Immediately. (Stick the board of health on them while you’re at it.) If left out for a few days, a good bagel will make short work of a plate glass window and doubles nicely as a hammer in crunch situations (although I don’t recommend using it to remove nails). Various companies like Lenders and Thomas’ make "bagels" (Dr. Evil should be here making quote marks in the air), but they’re really nothing more than puffy English muffins. And don’t even get me started on those horrid things that Dunkin’ Donuts churns out. Avoid these puffy bits of frippery aimed at running local bagel shops out of town. If you want something good, you’ve got to go local.
I’m blessed enough to live within the shadow of Gotham. Before bakers started moving out into the suburbs, our family would visit my fraunt (a friend aunt, meaning you call her "aunt" but she’s got nothing on you biologically. See also fruncle.) in Queens. We’d get no less than four or five dozen to bring home and freeze (at the time, Queens was a good two hour drive from where we lived in northern Jersey.) Now, my fraunt lives six hours away in Virginia and, fortunately, there are good bagel shops littered up and down the state (and some even have sigh! bialys!). If you don’t live near the Big Apple, make friends with someone who is. Try the Internet, there are plenty of places that ship them. Look carefully, I found several places that claim a New York name, but exist in places like Colorado (side note: I don’t trust any bagel shop west of the Mississippi. Nor will I move west of the Big Muddy for the same reasons). If all else fails, get thee to a bookstore and get the Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart (a die hard water bagel fan like myself). He has an excellent chapter on how to make your own. And, if by chance I start you out on a new career path making bagels for fun and profit, remember me in your will. Or at least with a dozen mixed.
posted by: Jiggsy at 11/14/03 12:59 |
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