A friend of mine is catering a 150-guest wedding reception in June and has asked me to make the bread. It’s a paying gig, which is cool, but the primary reason I’m doing it is because it sounds like fun to make a brigade of baguettes and a mess of challah.* I did a test run this weekend to see how sour the bread would turn out using approximately the same schedule of starter-refreshing, rising, and baking that I had worked out for the weekend of the wedding—my sourdough starter is one of the main reasons my friend asked me to handle the bread, but she didn’t necessarily want a pronounced sourdough flavor. As I’ve mentioned before, sourdough starters don’t actually make sour-tasting bread unless you want them to. However, especially when it’s warm and humid out, the yeast activity speeds up, so a baking timetable that wouldn’t produce any discernable tang in February might produce something quite sour in June.

There were some other things I needed to figure out too—making sure my estimates for how many slices we’d get out of each loaf were correct, figuring out what shape of challah would work best for pulled pork sandwiches. Oh, and learning how to make challah in the first place before attempting to manufacture it in quantities better measured by the gallon than by the cup. You know, minor details.

I was only planning on auditioning two shapes: a traditional six-stranded braid and a loaf baked in a standard bread pan. But I had a little extra dough because the pan won’t quite hold as much as a recipe for a braid calls for (well, technically it would, but the dough would rise over the edge, creating the mushroom shape characteristic of many commercial loaves, which I didn’t want), so I turned 1/4 of one batch into three knots about the size of hamburger buns. And the knots won. The braid might be prettier, even if it’s imperfect, but it’s way less impressive once it’s sliced. Plus, even a perfect braid wouldn’t produce perfectly consistent slices. However, the main reason the knots seem like they will work better is that challah is so soft and absorbent that with a warm, moist sandwich filling like pulled pork, it might get soggy and start to fall apart. At home or even at a restaurant, that might be fine—preferable, even, like the classic spongy white bread you get at Texas bbq joints. However, a big, formal event where the sandwiches might take a while to get from the kitchen to the table and the table to the guest seems to call for a little more structural integrity.

It struck me as I was looking up challah recipes that traditional Jewish breads seem to be all about extremes. Matza or matzoh is like the ur-bread, or bread pared down to its most basic form: grain ground in to a flour moistened and then heated until the starch sets. No leavening, by definition; no fat, by tradition. You can even make it without salt, although that would taste horrible. The bagel is the chewiest roll possible—the shape provides the maximum possible surface area for a non-flat bread and boiling causes the starch on the outside to gelatinize more than just baking, which is what makes them harder, shinier, and chewier than other breads. Then there’s challah, which is so rich with egg and fat and sugar that it’s about as close to pastry as a yeast bread can be.

Traditionally, challah is parve—meaning it doesn’t contain milk or butter. However, since we’re using it as a vehicle for pork, trying to accommodate guests with religious or ethical objections to animal products is already moot (there will be plenty of other options for them) so I decided to use butter instead of oil because I prefer the flavor. That makes the recipe a little more like brioche, but I’m still calling it challah because it doesn’t contain quite as much fat. If you imagine a continuum between croissant (lots of fat, very little water, not crusty) and baguette (no fat, lots of water, very crusty), brioche is nearly touching croissant and challah is one or two steps closer to baguette. However, like brioche, challah is incredibly soft and spongy—almost cake-like. They resemble genoise in their ability to take on additional moisture. That’s one of the reasons they’re often used for french toast and bread pudding-type applications—not only are they already eggy and rich, but they absorb much more batter than even the stalest baguette.

Although this recipe does call for a little more sugar than most yeast breads, it’s not too sweet to use as an accompaniment to savory dishes. It would be perfect for mopping up runny egg yolks, stews, or gravies. But it’s also rich, sweet, and flavorful enough to enjoy plain. It’s a celebration kind of bread, and it’s easy to see why Jews in southern Germany adopted it and incorporated it into their religious traditions.  

*As far as I know, there are no official terms of bread venery, although perhaps there should be, in which case I’m sure we can come up with better ones—A snobbery of baguettes? A gordian of challah? Read more

“Authentic” Bagels: Boil, Bake, and Bluster

There are three things that distinguish bagels from other breads:

The first, perhaps obviously, is the shape. There are at least four different theories about the origin of the word “bagel,” and all of them refer to the shape (etymology notes below the recipe for fellow word geeks). However, you can’t just make a standard bread dough into rings, throw it in a hot oven, and expect it to develop the glossy crust and dense, chewy interior that most people associate with bagels.

The second difference is an issue of method: bagels are traditionally boiled before they’re baked, which causes the surface starch to gelatinize, producing their characteristic smooth, shiny crust. The same is true of pretzels, which originated in the same region and, according to Maria Balinska, who wrote a 2008 book about the history of the bagel, are probably related. She specifically calls them “cousins,” whatever that means in terms of food history. She also notes that the Polish obwarzanek—another boiled, ring-shaped bread often sprinkled with sesame or poppy seeds—is an “older and Christian relative,” so perhaps that’s the spinster aunt who devoted herself to Jesus. Google translates the Polish entry on “Obwarzanek” to “Bagel,” and this travel guide refers to them as “pretzel rings.” I’m sure different people have different ways of distinguishing between the three depending on their particular definitions of what makes something a bagels, pretzels, or obwarzaneki, but the boil-then-bake method they share probably makes them more alike than different. So, for example, some people might think pretzels have to be shaped like folded arms whereas other people accept rods or rings as “pretzels,” but either way they’re formed from ropes of dough that maximize the surface area exposed to the boiling water, just like their relatives.

The third difference is an ingredient—bagels are the only bread I know of whose recipes frequently call for malt extract. Pretzel recipes occasionally include it, but not nearly as often as bagel recipes, many of which claim that the malt extract is the key to making “authentic” bagels or achieving a truly “bagel-y” flavor.

The idealized referent of bagel authenticity is usually the “New York bagel,” rather than their Polish-Jewish ancestors. However, when I lived in New York City, I ate plenty of bagels—even at delis on the Lower East Side—that were indistinguishable from the ones available at chains like Brugger’s and Einstein’s nationwide. Perhaps that’s just further evidence of the declining standard described here (accompanying a recipe that demands malt powder):

I can't count how often expatriate New Yorkers would stop me on the street with tears in their eyes, telling me that mine were the best bagels they'd had since they left "The City," and that they were better than most in "The City" these days. The reasons are simple. I didn't cut corners and used good ingredients. I don't know why so many bakeries cut corners on making bagels these days, it's really NOT that hard!

But I think it’s more likely that the idea of the superior New York bagel is primarily the product of nostalgic fantasies and social decline narratives—it’s something that never was and tells you more about contemporary anxieties and desires than anything real in the past. The tears in those expatriates’ eyes say more about contemporary feelings of depthlessness and transience, the desire for connections to the past and a sense of community, and the myriad dissatisfactions that make people want to think everything was better in the “good old days” than what makes a bagel delicious or “authentic” to anything.

Malt Extract: the Ancient Sweetener in your Bud Light

Given how the same bakers describe malted barley extract on their ingredients page, its presence is probably one of the so-infuriatingly-cut corners they’re talking about:

We wouldn't dream of making bagels or kaiser rolls without barley malt extract, and neither should you! Barley malt extract improves the taste and texture of the breads it is used in. It goes by a number of names. barley malt extract and malt extract among them. If a malt extract doesn't specify what grain it is made from, chances are pretty good it was made from barley. Barley is a grain used mostly in brewing beer and making Scotch Whisky. IBarley makt [sic] extract adds a nice taste to breads where it is used. For our recipes, you can either liquid or dry, diastatic or non-diastatic malt extract and not worry about changing the recipe, any combination of these will work just fine. The important things to avoid are hopped malt extract which is really only useful for making beer and the malted milk powder sold in many grocery stores as a milk flavor enhancer which has too little malt in it and too much sugar.

Malt extract is basically just sugar made from grain, usually starting with barley. According to Harold McGee, it’s “among the most ancient and versatile of sweetening agents, and was the predecessor of modern-day high-tech corn syrups.” Just like corn syrup and agave nectar, malt extract is produced by breaking starches into their constituent sugars. Rather than adding enzymes or acids, malting works by simply germinating or sprouting the grain. As a grain germinates, it produces enzymes that digest the grain’s starch to fuel its growth. Those enzymes can be dried and mixed with cooked grains (usually rice, wheat, and barley), which they can also digest, producing a sweet slurry containing lots of glucose, maltose (glucose+glucose), maltotriose (glucose+glucose+glucose), and some longer glucose chains.

It’s not as sweet as sugar, but before sugar colonialism, it was one of the primary sweeteners available in Europe and Asia (the other two were honey and molasses made from sorghum). According to McGee, it was the primary sweetener in China until around 1000 CE, and is still used in China and Korea for confections and the sweet, caramelized gloss on dishes like Peking Duck. Malt extract is also still frequently used in beer brewing—a friend who does home brewing told me recently that American brewers are especially likely to use it to adjust the alcohol content of their beers midway through the brewing process. Apparently the laws regarding how closely the alcohol percentage matches what’s on the label are fairly strict and as the sugars in malt extract are highly available to yeast, it’s a good way to increase the yeast activity quickly and reliably.

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I wouldn't normally cook two chickens in back to back weeks, but last month I ordered two chickens from a local farm with a stand at the farmer's market and then basically forgot all about it. The day after I roasted Larry, I got a call letting me know they'd killed my birds and I could pick them up Saturday. We were still working on Larry's leftovers, so I decided to do something other than simple roasting with at least one of the local birds.* I'd been wanting to try Coq au Vin, the "classic" French treatment for old roosters, and even though my just-butchered birds were relatively small, young chickens, I decided to give it a go.

The reason "classic" gets scare quotes is that there's some debate about whether Coq au Vin is actually the ancient, peasant dish it's often alleged to be or something more modern. The most compelling evidence on the side of "ancient": the ingredients and methods are typical of many other age-old European cooking traditions—it's basically a fricassee in wine with mirepoix (onions+carrots+celery), mushrooms, herbs, and some salt pork or bacon. There are also dozens of regional variations based on different varietals of grapes and mushrooms. For example, in the Alsace region, there's a recipe for cooking roosters that uses Riesling, morels, and cream (the epicurious version is here). Additionally, since it's basically a time and labor-intensive way of salvaging a tough piece of meat, it seems to exemplify the ideals of frugality and resourcefulness associated with old, "peasant" traditions.

But those traditions are often invented rather than discovered. What makes Coq au Vin questionable is that despite the long history of French culinary publications, the first written reference to "Coq au Vin" doesn't show up until 1913. A decade later, when the first recipe for "Coq au Vin" appeared in print, it presented the idea as a truly novel. According to the Oxford Companion to Food, aside from the cockscomb, which was prized as a garnish, the cock was historically regarded as indigestible.

Whether or not it's ancient, it's certainly a "classic" in that it's become part of the popular canon of French cuisine, on par with other dishes like ratatouille and coquilles St. Jacques, if not quite as iconic as the baguette. In The Next Iron Chef Season 2 Episode 2 earlier this month, Coq au Vin was one of the "classic inspirations" contestants had to use as the basis for an elimination challenge (along with things like boulliabaisse, pasta puttanesca, and Greek dolmas). Although its modern popularity is a little ironic, given the difficulty most cooks would have securing the titular rooster, it's easy to see why it would be a winning flavor combination. What wouldn't be delicious after marinating overnight and then simmering long and slow in a lot of wine infused with the richness of mushrooms, bacon, garlic, mirepoix, and fresh thyme? I'm almost tempted to try it with an old belt or pair of worn out shoes.

That gets at the main reason I was ultimately dissatisfied with the results: it was tasty enough, but the chicken is basically expendable. As a meal, it was no better than this mushroom bourguignon and way, way more time consuming. It's not that it's hard, but it just doesn't quite seem worth it. So unless I happen into some old rooster meat, I'll stick to roasting my chickens—which is not only easier, but tastes better and takes advantage of their juicy, tender, young meat better.

*I will never get over the delightful double-entendreness of birds and women, and because I am intellectually thirteen, I will never give a chicken a classically feminine name. The idea of a "bird named Larry" just tickles me on so many stupid levels. I named this one "Biff."

Recipe and pictures below the jumpRead more