Bagels

I have said in my other posts  that when I decide to make something new to me but common, like lemon bars, for example, I do not follow the recipe completely. I read a bunch of bagel recipes and did my own thing. My family loves bagels - our breakfast and lunch. I know there are so many bagels on the market and for the longest time I was happy with Noah's bagels and bought them in bulk at Costco.  Then I looked at the ingredient list and as I suspected I found High Fructose Corn Syrup.  In my case, I read labels and find it in so many things, so I can't completely avoid it, if it is in breads and most of the jams, and even in catchup. While it is nearly impossible to rid your diet completely of HFCS, unless you are planning on buying everything organic and make your own breakfast cereal, one can make baby steps and try. Making bagels at home is just one way, also I save money doing it. 

to make about 1 dozen
6 -6 1/2 c of flour
3 tblsp sugar
2 tblsp salt
3 tsp yeast
3 tbls oil
2 c warm water

My KitchenAid mixer does a fantastic job, I do not even get my hands sticky. The dough it really stiff and tough. Avoid the temptation of adding more water. Once the dough is formed, it is cut in pieces and rolled or formed into a ball, then into bagel. Arrange them on the baking sheet and let them rest for no more then one half hour or while the water is boiling. I boil water in my large shallow pan and couple of tbsp of sugar. Drop the bagels in to the water and boil about 1 minute on each side. Place on the baking sheet, and sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds. alternately you may add the seeds to a small plate and dip the wet bagel in it. Arrange on the baking sheet and bake in the middle of the oven at 425F for 20 min.

My husband loves onion bagels and I had to figure out how to make those. To the list of ingredients for those bagels I add

1 small onion finely chopped and sauteed til golden brown
1/2 cup of sesame seeds
1/2 cup of poppy seeds
1/4 c of sunflower seeds
2 tblsp of caraway seeds
reserve about a 1 tbl sp of the mixture for topping the bagels.

Sauerkraut Bread

This is really simple yet delicious dish. Cabbage pies are very common in Russia. There are a million and one recipe for a dough as well as cabbage stuffing. Some require sauteing the cabbage; some add other things to stuffing like boiled eggs; yet others use fermented Russian cabbage or a mix of it with fresh; some doughs are made with yeast and some aren't; the shape may be round or take up entire baking sheet. The pies or breads differ vastly and enjoyed by practically all. Once again I played with different recipes, tried several ways of stuffing and adapted this to my own taste buds and, these days, make it almost exclusively with sauerkraut. For dough I modified my usual Hallah dough recipe and make it with milk.

Dough

4-4&1/2 cup flour
2 eggs
4 tblsp sugar
3 tsp salt
1/4 cup oil or melted butter
1 pkg yeast=2 1/4 tsp
1 1/4 warm  milk
Stuffing
1/2 from  2lbs jar of sauerkraut drained

3large onions

1/3 c oil for sauteing

salt pepper

1 egg for egg wash

I make my dough in my Kitchen aid and do not bother mixing yeast and sugar water separately. In a mixing bowl I measure and sift the flour, add eggs, oil or butter, salt, sugar and yeast then warm milk. Then make dough with dough attachment. KitchenAid does it's job well and the dough is formed and rolled into a ball, ready for resting within 10 min. Using the same bowl, I cover the top of the dough loosely with well oiled piece of plastic wrap. My oven that is not on at the moment but has the oven light on provides a perfect place for the dough to prove. The oven is draft free and T in it raises to about 130F just from the oven light being on. With this conditions the dough is ready to be used in a couple of hours. While the dough is resting I clean the onions, cut them in halves, then quarters and slice thinly. Saute in oil over small flame to caramelize the onions.  It takes about 20 minutes for the onions to get to the perfect condition and to get caramel gold in color. Drain the sauerkraut in colander and squeeze some but not all of the moisture out. Then salt and pepper added and mix well with sauerkraut. After the dough rose and doubled in size, punch it down and roll out on a flour dusted surface to about 1/2 inch thickness. Turn the oven to 375 F. it is best to form the log directly on the baking sheet lined with silicon pad because it is not easy to transfer the log once t is made.The stuffing mix is placed in the middle and dough is formed in to a log. The seam can be placed on the bottom or the dough can be folded in as a 3 folds letter. If the dough is too thick at the ends of a log it can be trimmed and used for a decorative touch as  a small braid or flowers on the top of the log. Most importantly the steam will need to escape somehow, so either the holes have to be punctured in with a knife or a fork of the dough has to be folded decoratively to allow for steam to escape and not tear the bread open. After all has been folded and decorated, egg wash is applied with silicon brush. The bread is baked in the middle of the oven for 40-50 min, till the bread reaches the deep golden color. Allow to rest and cool down for at least 15 min before slicing.

Hallah bread

I love hallah bread and was completely at awe at the Jewish ladies that made it at home every Friday for the Shabbat in Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. My mom and I lived in that neighbourhood when we first came to US. Every Friday we were invited to a Shabbat dinner by a random Jewish family, for whom having us for Friday night dinner was a mitzvah - good deed. I was not familiar with anything that had to do with cooking and mystery of making bread was beyond me. I could not imagine that bread is something that can be done at home. I know better now and do not think much of it. I do not make it on a weekly basis but often enough not to need to look at the recipe.

4-4&1/2 cup flour
2 eggs
4 tblsp sugar
3 tsp salt
1/4 cup oil
1 pkg yeast=2 1/4 tsp
1 1/4 warm water
1 egg for brushing
Most of the bread recipes call for mixing of water and sugar and letting it ferment and bubble before adding it to the flour. I use my Kitchen aid to make the dough. It's clean and fast. I add the flour and the rest of ingredients then mix it all with hook attachment on dough setting. Cover the dough with oiled well large piece of plastic and place in the oven that is off but has the light on. The light bulb inside the oven provides just enough heat and draft free environment that the dough is fast to rise. Once it is doubled in size, punch it down, knead it for a couple of minutes, cut in 3 equal pieces and braid . Set aside on the baking sheet lined with silicon mat for about 20 min. and turn oven to 375F. Meanwhile make an egg wash and brush on the hallah. It can be sprinkled with sesame or poppy seeds for decoration and place in  375F oven for 30-40 min or until uniformly light brown.

Hamantashen

I have been so busy in the past couple of weeks that my previous blog took me more then 3 weeks to finish! Well, I was helping at the synagogue with Purim Carnival! Wow, that was Fun!

For me Purim always means one thing -Hamantashen. I love that treat and since I was growing up in Soviet Union my knowledge of Jewish traditions stems from my Grandma's culinary creations. There was no Temple, no Sunday religious school and I almost feel jealous of my kids, who can whine on Sunday morning asking me, "Why do we need to go to Hebrew School?" My grandma kept a little bit of Jewish traditions alive with her cooking.
Around Purim every year she made delicious hamantashens - triangular shaped buns filled with poppy seed filling. She made them out of yeast dough and almost always with poppy seeds, although I do remember prune filling, too. Poppy seeds need to be cooked and processed - milled. There was no food processor when I was growing up, we had an old fashion meat grinder, so it was used for a lot of grinding jobs. Cooked poppy seed filling was passed through it before being added to the buns, to make it more refined. Not only did Grandma cooked Jewish foods she went through a lot of headache to get it done. Those machines required assembly but I loved helping in the kitchen. Imagine my surprise when I ate my first hamantash in New York. You know the feeling of wanting something really bad,  like vanilla ice cream, for example, placing your first spoon  in your mouth in anticipation and instead getting mint... - Yuck! Well, that was exactly what I felt when I took a bite of American Hamantash. "Something is seriously wrong", I thought. If they are calling this a hamantash, these are wrong kind of Jews. I could not accept that cookie shaped as a triangle can be mistaken for a hamantash! It was wrong! Well, I have calmed down since then, although in my mind yeast dough Hamantashen is forever the only true kind. These days I bake both kinds and usually only get around to it once a year. That's all that is needed, Purim is but once a year holiday.
This is not my grandma nor my recipe, she died before I learned to cook, but I use it year after year without fail. I simplified the process slightly and made few adjustments, so I guess I can call it my own. The dough is very similar to Hallah dough, except for the milk and butter. Here are my creations from past few years.                                                                               


Yeast dough on top and honey dough on the
bottom. I used guava jam and poppy filling.

 



Yeast Dough:

5 c sifted flour

3/4 c Sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

3 eggs

2 1/2 tsp yeast

1 c scalded but cooled milk

1 c melted butter (I melt it in the scalded milk and cool milk at the same time)

1 egg wash for brushing on hamantashen

I use my standard Kitchen Aid to make dough and do not dissolve the yeast ahead of time. I add all of the dry ingredients to the bowl (4 cups of flour only), turn on the machine and add eggs and cooled mixture of milk and butter. It is warm to the touch but not hot, so not to kill the yeast. Add remaining cup of flour as needed. Once the dough is formed I cover it in the same mixing bowl and let it rest in the turned off oven but with it's light on. The heat of the light bulb  provided just the right temperature for the dough to proof and rise.  Once it doubled in size, punch it down and roll out. Cut out rounds, fill with and turn upside down to rest while you making the other ones. This lets the seams to stay intact. You have to be careful with poppy seed filling, since it prevents the seems from staying sealed. Bake at 375F for 2--25 min.

Honey dough:
4 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 soft butter
4 eggs
1 c honey
Mix all of the ingredients together until the dough is formed. Roll out and cut out 4 in circles to be filled and shaped into triangles. Bake at 350F for 20 min.

Poppy seed filling for Hamantashen

2 c poppy seeds

1 c milk

3/4 honey

1 tsp grated lemon rind

1/2 raisins

This filling as a bit time consuming, because poppy seeds need to be ground. I'm not sure why, but I'm not able to grind it well in the food processor, and have to use spice grinder. Those are small and have to be don in small batches. I hope your food processor works better. I grind raw seeds but not to complete butter, but almost half way there. The oils in the seeds are like in peanut, can turn your fill into butter. In a sauce pan combine poppy seeds, honey and milk and start cooking the mixture, frequently stirring until it becomes thick. Then add raisins and lemon rind.
I usually do not use apricot jam but use other jams that I have cooked and/or have opened in the fridge. It comes our well always and no one seems to complain. Hope you will try!