Jalapeño Bagels

Bagels are the most rewarding toroidal pastry. I'm not here to bad-mouth doughnuts, but I think they have received far too much attention; as evidenced by the Torus article on Wikipedia failing to mention bagels even once. This is a travesty! Keep a look out for the Facebook group to end Wikipedia's bagel discrimination (Bagels Are Toroids Too So Halt Internet Tacitness (BATTSHIT), or Toroidal Inclusiveness Coalition(TIC)). Of course anyone can edit Wikipedia, but why miss an opportunity form another Facebook group, and protest a bit?

There is a reason that most people don't make bagels themselves though, it is a tremendous undertaking and bagels of reasonable quality are available from bakeries (most supermarket bagels are wite-brehd™ rolls with holes in). However, if you are willing to work a bit, these bagels will reward your effort with interest.


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You will need some non-food stuff:

• flat, smooth work area on which to shape and proof bagels
• stock pot for boiling the bagels
• two smallish mixing bowls for liquid and dry ingredients
• one small bowl for mixing oil with jalepeños
• flat pan or cookie sheet for baking bagels
• A standing mixer, or a very large bowl.
  

You may also want:

• a kitchen scale
• cooling racks
• big knife for dough surgery
• victims, er assistants

The Bagels are made of:

• 3 oz oil
• 1 1/2 cups water VERY WARM (and maybe a little more)
• 2 TB sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 TB active dry yeast (a little more than a packet of instant yeast)
  
• 22 oz flour(about 5 cups)

You may also want:

• 1 tsp tumeric
• 4-5 jalapeños

First you make a yeast slurry. Combine VERY WARM water, sugar, salt and yeast:



Mine were very excited right away, but its best to give them about ten minutes to warm up and get multiplying. Let your slurry hang out somewhere warm for about 10 minutes while you assemble your other ingredients.

Weigh out the flour:



Add it to your standing mixer (or large bowl):



Most of the "heat" from the jalapeño, like most peppers, comes from the white picante (placenta) surrounding the seeds; if you want spicey bagels you can leave it in, but I prefer my bagels mild. If you want more detail on how to remove this and slice the peppers you can see the step by step photo in my Gyoza post.



Dice 'em and mix 'em with your three oz of oil. If you want the color, now is a good time to add the turmeric. I tripled the recipe, but it should look more or less like this.



By this time your slurry should be foaming like crazy:



If you're using a standing mixer, dump the wet ingredients on top. If you've just got a mixing bowl, you should mix your wet stuff first.



Start on the lowest speed.



Until it comes together, like the picture below, then crank it up to medium.



Let that it rattle for at least 15-20 minutes. If you're using your hands this much kneading will take a really long time. I recommend kneading it until you're exhausted, then resting for 1o minutes, and repeating the process. It should look like this when its all done:



Shape it into a nice brain (I tripled the recipe to make 3 dozen, so don't be frightened if your brain is smaller).



Tuck it into an oiled bowel or some such vessel, keep it in a nice warm place (like an oven with a pilot light, or a couch with a bunch of cuddling people) cover it with a damp towel or tee-shirt, and let it sit for an hour.



'Til it looks like this:



Punch it down, which despite the name and the way this picture looks, just means pressing down gently and folding a bit until the bigger bubbles have gone.



Slice it into quarters, and then slice those into thirds.



Definitely use a cutting board though, that last picture is silly; I could have dulled the knife. You'll be reusing the t-shirt to cover all of your cute little pieces, to see that they don't dry out.



Then you have to do this thing with rolling and folding, here just watch this video. Put a large pot of liberally salted water on to boil, and let them chill out for another ten or twenty minutes under that tee-shirt, and they look like this:



Preheat the oven to 450°, then boil the little darlings, for about a minute on each side.



Place them on a flat surface, no cooling racks unless you want your bagels to have sweet grill marks. These bagels are not the innocent dough rounds they once were, they're grayer, emptier, and tempered by the relentless boil.



I love the color change with the turmeric here; especially on the bluish steel background. It reminds me of that one movie. You know the one, with the underground sparring society? I don't remember.



Now clearly these are flour dough balls that have been cooked in water, so let us pause for a moment to consider an important question: Is the bagel a dumpling? I think so, and I'm tired of bagel exclusion, and therefore I propose Bagel UNity with Toroids and Dumplings (BUNDT), Coalition Against Bagel Linguistic Exclusion (CABLE) or Bagel Advocacy and Support Society (BASS) to take action against the bagel's categorical disenfranchisement on Wikipedia and the world at large. If your wondering why I haven't posted in awhile, its because it takes a long time to come up with acronyms.

Now you bake them at 450° for 10 minutes and flip them. They should look like this when you put them back in the oven for 10 more minutes.



Remove them quickly to a cooling rack and try to resist eating them for 10 minutes so they will be solid enough to stand up to slicing.



(Note the sweet grill marks in the above photo) That is one fine looking whole wheat jalapeño bagel.




They stand up pretty well to those bagel-slicing guillotines, but you may just want to tear into them with teeth bared, à la this weeks Guest Mouth, Ashley:



Ah-hem, punk rock.
Happy baking y'all; remember to keep your kitchen queer. Next week Dango!

Zucchini can get really huge if you let them; and in the midst of a zucchini glut, zucchini bread is a gardener's best friend. Vegan zucchini bread is sexy as fuck. The end.

Recipe is scalable but it goes like this:

• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 3T Flax Meal
• 3T Starch (I used Arrowroot Powder)
• 3T Oil
• 3T Water
  
• 1 cup Sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 cups whole wheat flour
  
• 1 1/2 T baking powder
• 1 T cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
  

(optional spices)

• 2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp cardamom
• 1 tsp ginger

(~400°F)
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First, you've got to get your zucchini down to gratible size.


Then, recruit some graters, anyone hanging around on the roof of your cooperative at about 1AM ought to do. Don't have a cooperative roof from which to recruit? We're accepting applications.


Get some cheesecloth and squeeze the fuck out of your zucchini bits. Be sure to extract at least three cups of fuck for a zucchini of this size.


We had approximately 13 cups of zucchini; which meant approximately 20 flax eggs. A flax egg is:

• 1T Ground Flax (x 20 = 1 1/4 cup)
  
• 1T Starch (arrowroot is what I use)
• 1T Oil
• 1T Water
  

Whisk your flax eggs together, then add your sugar. It is a good idea to whip some air into it if you have the technological capacity. Add spices (including vanilla), and well, you know...


Sift your flour, salt, and baking powder together, and mix it in to your flax egg, but only for a second 'cuz you don't want to overmix your flour and end up with zucchini bricks, lovely though they are as architectural accents.


Its time to start mixing with the dough hook (though a wooden spoon works well in small scale operations), add in your zucchini.


Sharing is caring.




Stir until just mixed.




Grease your pan and ladle it out. We had enough to make eight GIANT loaves, and our ultra-bread pans can do 4 at a time.



This shot is from about half way through; 4 at a time they took about an hour (actually our oven is cold so it took a bit longer, but it got quick when we turned it up.





If you have a wooden skewer or a toothpick, stabbing it into the middle to see if it comes out mostly clean is the best way to know its done. Also, it should be fucking beautiful.




It should be golden brown and it should smell like awesome.


The bottom should get pretty dark; if you flour the pan after you grease it it will probably come out easier. Use the back of a butter knife to loosen it once its cooled a little bit.


Eat with espresso, sunrise, and a sad song. Its the breakfast of interesting people; the champions are counterrevolutionary.