Skip to main content

When kitchen meets experiment- make your classic sourdough bagel with 'lye'

Yes, it is correct- I ordered some food-graded lye on Amazon. If you are not familiar with lye, aka sodium hydroxide here, it is actually a very corrosive chemical. You know, my nerdy scientists, we use it in lab all the time. But when it comes to making pretzels and bagels, do you also recognize that the classic pretzel wash has lye in it. A quick dip in the magical/alkaline water creates a rich brown sheen with thin crust on the dough.


Sounds intimidating, it is acceptable for someone who deals with other hundreds of millions of 'sort-of-scary' experiment every day lol. (I've been thinking about what my years of labwork& research have brought me for my life: for real, protocol reading and testing things out.) Plus I'm just such a bagel fanatic- that explains a lot.


I guess I fell in love with bagels even before with New York City, where the best bagels are made. Toasted bagel, cream cheese and some slices of smoked salmon makes those busiest New Yorkers' perfect morning. I guess that's also why this on-the-go/ kind-of- healthy (definitely if compared to doughnuts) food is just so popular here. Right across the street of my apartment is one of my favorite bagel spots, so I haven't been bothering to make my own bagels until recently.


Thus, making my own bagel is purely out of curiosity I should say? After all, I've been making so many regular breads. The bonus is- I can add as much poppy seeds, garlic and sesame as I want XDDDD

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First bread in my new kitchen: Thomas Keller's multigrain batard

Follow my blog with Bloglovin Isn't spring the moving season? Yes, to me I guess as I've been moving for two years in a row at this time of year. Sadly I finally moved out from the glorious upper east side of New York after being there for 4 years (can't believe! is it that long already??), to the "humble" Queens.. However, after I moved in, I'm starting to love my neighborhood. There is actually quite a few to explore and to discover (I mean, hmm, restaurant) in Queens. Indeed, I can't just improvise to make a call to order some Chinese food delivered to my door, or walk to the French bakery a few blocks away whenever I want. Luckily I can opt to make my own.  With a good multigrain bread, some jam/spread, slices of good cheese, I am considering myself having a perfect breakfast/brunch. Of course, the world is even better if there is a cup of tea :) Multigrain batards are the most frequently-ordered bread I do in store- they're crust...
Post a Comment
Read more

Continue the whole crepe theme: cocoa& banana infused crepe cake

I've been making crepe cakes in a row for three weeks! That sounds ridiculous even to myself, but I just like to keep practicing one recipe until I finally feel happy about it. As a result, I never get the have the 'beliked' cakes often. Now, after my crepe cake battle, I did learn some tricks, especially about how to have really thin crepes. Let's have some troubleshooting, shall we? For those who are not familiar with crepe cakes, or care only about how they taste but never bother to know how they're made, crepe cakes are assembled by layers of crepes, filled with cream in between. To make a crepe cake, you make the crepes individually, let them cool, and layer them to compose the cake with the cream as 'glue'. The whole process is nothing fancy, just get your 'bricks and cement' ready and be a good builder! What is tricky are the quality of your materials, in other words, to get your crepes as thin as possible. There are professional crepe ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to feed A BOYFRIEND when you have no intention to cook

I had almost given up cooking before my boyfriend! I've always been enjoying spending time in the kitchen, but, often time, I just gave in to my laziness. Plus, I had my perfect excuses: 1. I'm a busy phD student; 2. I'm spending most of my "kitchen time" baking. So I'm really used to a rather simple meal plan myself: homemade bread for breakfast, salad for lunch and yogurt for dinner. (I try to balance the protein and starch in it, so, don't worry, I can totally be filled up.) With all my passion (and time), I made bread for myself and cakes for friends. However, all these routine somehow changed when I started to take on the responsibility to feed someone- someone who is an ultimate meat lover, who hates salad (I mean, all the green leaves), who would never join my meal plan. Alas, the game completely changed- only I'm still the lazy girl as I've always been. So I came up with a couple of tricks for the "game": 1. Make it simple...
Post a Comment
Read more