Dunkin' Donuts, what can I say? It's been a while.
Look, let's cut to the chase. I know you don't even know my name. I'm the girl down the street.
We chilled a few times over the summer when I needed a break, we grabbed coffee during my late nights studying this semester.
We may have even hooked up at a lackluster work party. You know how it goes. I love those Munchkins.
I thought I'd be able to call you
my coffee shop.
I was entranced by your regional charm and ample selection of goods. But you had a lot going on. You're going places- I mean, who would have time for a commitment when you're busy opening 250 more retail locations throughout the US? I understand. So, you know, I played the field.
I checked out the soulful neighborhood coffee shop, the rival Starbucks in the next town over. At the end of the day, though, sometimes a girl's got to do the job herself.
These bagels blew my mind. I'll be back for your specialty sandwiches and doughnuts, but as far as bready breakfast is concerned, we're done. Don't call me until you're ready to settle down.
Jess
Peter Reinhart's Bagels (adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice)Ingredients (makes six 4.5 oz bagels or ten 3 oz bagels)Preparation time: 2-3 hours to prepare the bagels (best to start in the afternoon) and a rest in the fridge overnight
Cooking time: Fifteen minutes
For the sponge:
3/4 teaspoon of yeast
2 cups of flour
2 cups of water
For the dough: 1/4 teaspoon of yeast
1 3/4 cups of flour plus two tablespoons
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of corn or malt syrup
To finish:1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of corn or malt syrup
Cornmeal for dusting
1. Starting the afternoon or night before you want to bake the bagels, start by making your sponge. Combine the flour and yeast in a large bowl and slowly add the water until the mixture resembles a smooth pancake batter. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit for one to two hours or until the mixture has doubled in size.
2. Incorporate your dough ingredients, starting with the yeast and flour and finishing with the salt and corn syrup at the end, mixing and kneading the dough until it is completely hydrated and no raw flour is left. Knead the dough until it is smooth and pliable but not sticky (about ten minutes) and all of the ingredients are incorporated into the ball.
3. Immediately begin dividing the dough into small balls of your desired weight or size. I weighed mine so that they would brown evenly but it's not necessary. Smooth the balls out and cover them with a damp paper towel. Let them sit for twenty minutes.
4. Once the balls have rested, start by shaping them into bagels. I used the "stretch and tear" method, where I poked a hole into the center of my bagels and stretched the dough around my finger to create a smooth, even thickness. But you can also use the "rope and loop" method. Take a piece of dough and roll it into an even tube like you would a clay snake. (I failed art class) Take the tube and fold it over two of your fingers, looping the two ends together and smoothing the bagel dough out. Repeat with the remaining bagels.
5. Grease a baking sheet and lay your bagels on it. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let them sit for another twenty minutes. Once they have sat, fill a large bowl with cool tap water and perform the float test, where you will see if the bagels are ready to retard in the fridge over night. If a bagel floats on the surface for ten or more seconds, they are ready. Pat the wet bagel off with a paper towel and pop the pan on a flat surface in the fridge over night.
6. In the morning, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Start boiling some water in a large pot on the stove. Leave your bagels in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook them. When the water is boiling, add the baking soda and corn syrup. Boiling the bagels is essential and will help prevent the bagels from spreading in the oven as well as create that chewy, thick crust that makes a bagel a bagel. Boil the bagels for one to two minutes, alternating sides halfway. The longer you boil your bagel, the thicker the crust and chewier the texture will be.
7. When all the bagels are boiled, spread your cornmeal out on your baking sheet and place your bagels on top. This is also the best time to add any toppings to your bagels, like poppy seeds, chopped onions, or garlic salt. The cornmeal will prevent the bagels from sticking. Bake for ten minutes or until the tops are golden brown.
8. Let the bagels cool for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then slice and toast or eat plain. Serve with salted butter or cream cheese and lox.
Salted ButterIngredients (makes 1/4 cup)
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt or fleur de sel
1. Combine all ingredients.
2. Spread and eat once melted.
These are so goddamned easy to make. It's the yeasty equivalent of "set it and forget it." Now, thank me for your New Year's Day breakfast.
Here at Foodette, we prioritize a number of elite values in the food blogging world, not the least of which is "above all, pretension." And everyone knows that Japanified versions of American snacks designed to pair with cocktails are pretentious, to say the least, without even mentioning that these chips are endorsed by an expert, Japan's best sommelier in 1995, Shinya Tasaki. Hell yes? I mean, look at this guy's face. Sniffing out of a Riedel Burgundy glass in a tuxedo. I would trust everything that man said even if he told me he could take me on a tour of Hell in between sips of DRC La Tache.
J-List sent these over for us to try. According to the description, Mr. Tasaki and Frito-Lay formulated these chips to ride on the coattails of the burgeoning Asian wine market sales. Because nothing goes as well with an $8,000 bottle of 1947 Petrus like Doritos and Sun Chips, am I right? This particular flavor was designed to pair well with cocktails, presumably ones you can enjoy with Tasaki's $200 corkscrew and bottle opener. The bag has two different types of chips, flavored like bacon steak and tomato ketchup. The chips are smaller than your average Dorito but still have the rounded edges and thicker crunch of Japanese Doritos. The scent is pungent, like getting a noseful of Spanish paprika and tomato sauce, with an almost cloying initial sweetness wafting up from the bag.
The Doritos were definitely more successful than the Sun Chips, with a light, crispy crunch and wonderful flavor. These tasted like the Herr's Heinz ketchup chips but with a deeper, richer tomato sauce flavor, with a brown sugar edge and garlic bite to them. They were very sweet, but not in a way that made them inedible or incongruous with the rest of the chips. The natural sweet, oily flavor of the corn chip was a wonderful carrier of the ketchup flavor. It sort of put regular ketchup to shame as I felt that the flavor was just deeper and tangier, more of a marinara but somehow sweeter. Unique and a little strange to adjust to, but tasty.
The Sun Chips were supposed to mimic the exact flavor of the giant, quivering bacon slab on the package. A tough act to follow. And they crumbled in the face of porcine goodness, providing a weak smoky flavor dominated by the corny heft of the chip. No bacon, no fattiness, nothing that would have suggested meat or even barbecue sauce. It mainly tasted like ground black pepper and corn, not a bad flavor profile, but also not bacon. I've noted this before in Japanese Cheetos- all of the chips are much thicker and the denser ones end up having a dry noodle-like texture. Not a bad thing, but also kind of strange to get used to.
So the chips were good on their own, but what about alongside a few drinks? In one of the most stupidly surreal Foodette photoshoots ever, we documented the success of these chips as snacks and as cocktail pairings with what else? Bakon vodka, because you can't eat bacon chips without drinking a bacon drink. Says so somewhere in the Bible or something.
We made three cocktails, two contemporary and one classic to try with the chips. Our first cocktail didn't utilize bacon outside of a small curled garnish. It was a classic gin and tonic, nothing more, nothing less. The sweet cooked tomato flavor of the Doritos really amplified the sweet juniper notes in the gin, but neither was so sweet as to feel like a dessert or candy.
The second cocktail was kind of a "kitchen sink" style drink to gross out Miss Love and also see how the chips held up with a little spice. Enter the Flaming Bacon- bacon vodka, hot pepper vodka, Prometheus Springs pomegranate black pepper juice, club soda, and a salsa dipped bacon garnish. Despite the grocery list of ingredients and the science beaker presentation, it didn't taste like ass and the chips held up to the spice of the drink. It was surprisingly the best combination of the triad.
Our last drink failed and completely overwhelmed the chips. The Broker's Breakfast had hazelnut espresso vodka, bacon vodka, milk, and club soda. It was atrociously flavored and discordant with a fake sweetener aftertaste. The creaminess destroyed the flavors of the chips with a filmy, boozy tang. But aside from that, it seemed like the chips actually were congruent with fruity, tangy, and even spicy drinks. Then again, what salty snack isn't? These would be a unique alternative to a traditional pub mix, but didn't seem wildly outside of the realm of other sodium-laden nibbles designed to sop up booze. Maybe the wine-based Doritos will prove to be more successful.
