Hello and welcome to Cooking Musics. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Music's coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh got uh got John behind me from uh, you know, used to be Booker and Dax, now just the executive chef at uh Temperance Wine Bar. How you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
Yeah? Yeah. We got uh we got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. Hi, welcome. Yeah, yeah.
Uh do we have Jack? I didn't hear Jack before the show is Jack. No, flying. Flying. No, okay.
Where's he flying from, too? To DC. Sorry, Joe. Be you to it. Yeah.
LA to DC. All right. You know what we call that flight? No offense, DC. No offense.
I kind of love you. Maybe. I don't know. I love you, DC. Uh, but we do have from uh Vancouver Island, Quinn, how you doing?
Hey, I'm good. Yeah, great. And then and in the uh in the whatever, in our new style of thing where we before we go off on a bunch of tangents, we introduce a special guest. I'm very happy to have Craig Hutchinson here from Omo Restaurants, soon to be Omo Bagels. Omo Bagels in New Haven.
How you doing? Attitude is a mindset. I am wonderful. Well, uh, so the reason I wanted to have you on, we're gonna go on tangents in a minute, but the reason I wanted to have you on is I was invited, I don't know why, but I was invited as a uh guest judge for Bagel Fest, I don't know, like a month or two ago in Brooklyn, and I had your bagel, and I was like, oh, this is a great bagel. And then I was like, and unlike mm 80, 85% of the people there, like you were super stoked to talk about like technique and ingredients.
And so we went, you're using a lot of ingredients, I think are super interesting. You're doing a lot of interesting stuff. So that's why I have you on. But before that, let's go through random tangents. So if you're listening live on Patreon, call in your questions too, especially bagel related, especially bagel related.
917-4101507. That's 917-410-1507. And if you can't listen live because you aren't on the Patreon, John, what should they do? Well, you can download the podcast anywhere, but you should also become a cooking issues Patreon member. Go to uh Patreon.com/slash cooking issues and sign up.
There's a bunch of different membership levels, and you get awesome perks in all the levels. So yeah, discounted books for Kitchen Arts and Letters, uh, access to the Discord and many, many other things. Now, one thing that's an issue, right? Here's an issue that I hadn't thought about. So we do the episode on on a Tuesday, and the Patreon folks can listen to it, right?
Early what? Early before everyone else. Yeah, yeah, live and early. And then on Friday, we let it, you know, anyone can download for free. That's our that's our mode, right?
That's true. Right. Because you know, information should be free eventually. You know what I'm saying? Eventually.
Eventually. Free. Uh it's my opinion. But anyway, you know, you can have your own opinion, but that's my opinion. Uh now, next Tuesday is the last time to ask a question before Thanksgiving, correct?
That's true. But you can't listen to the answer until it's too late if you're not on the Patreon. It's a good hook. Oh. Yeah.
Boom. Yeah. So on Friday, after you've already ruined your meal, you can figure out what you should have done on the Thursday, or you can join the Patreon and get the answer right away. And I'll I'll make a promise. Next week is a no tangent Tuesday, theoretically.
I promise that like I will go on no tangents until all the Thanksgiving questions are answered. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Although, Stuss, I feel like all the Thanksgiving questions have been asked over the past like 11 years and that people don't have any more Thanksgiving questions.
That's not true. All right. You know who we should have as on a guest on next year? Is somebody from the Butterball line? The Butterball.
Oh, the Butterball telephone line. Yeah. Well, I'm that's you know, have you ever called that place, Craig? I never have. You we should all just call it and just like make up problems.
Yeah. I left the bag inside the bird. Can I make my mousse out of it now? Yeah. Why do you use plastic bags inside of something I'm gonna bake?
Actually, I don't know if Butterball's one of the paper bag people or one of the plastic bag people. But why isn't everyone a paper bag person? Why stick plastic inside of a bird you're gonna roast? That about 90% of people do roast anyway. Yeah.
I mean, I've I even forget it still. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, especially if you're not doing the old school stuffing thing. Speaking of old school stuffing, uh today, uh last week or a week and a half ago, I taped an episode of uh Dave Chang and Chris Yang's recipe club, the Thanksgiving episode, and I think it it's go it's it's gone up today already, John.
Yeah. Yeah, so you can find that on Spotify. You can find that on Spotify. In this anywhere. Anywhere.
Yep. Not just on Spotify. I know I just found it on the iTunes podcast, so yeah. Spotify. Anywhere.
Anywhere you can find it. But I'll say this here's what I talked about. So apparently, Recipe Club Wiley did it, is where you're supposed to use somebody else's recipe and then you make it and then you make comments on it. Right. But for for the Thanksgiving episode, Chang was like, what are two recipes that that I use?
So I cooked my own recipes, which is kind of unfair. So I messed with them a little bit. So I did my mom's stuffing, which you know I've had for the past 50 years, you know what I mean? And and I can make it in my sleep. In fact, if I go to somebody else's house for Thanksgiving, when I come home, I make that.
You know what I mean? Because no one else's stuffing is what I want. Right, Sashi, you want your the stuffing that you want. It's not whether it's best or worse. You say you want the one you want.
Yeah. Yeah. You're telling me you've never been satisfied with somebody else's stuffing. No. Wow.
Other stuffing tastes good, but I haven't had Thanksgiving yet. Or should I say no stuffing has satisfied you? That's right. Right. Right.
Well, but I'll say, and I and my mother-in-law's Parker House rolls, which I've modified because so Parker House Roll, for those of you that I don't know, haven't had a Parker House roll, like a lot of butter. The answer is a lot of butter. And she forms hers with the where you fold, she makes the little round ones and then paints it with butter and then folds it into a C and then stacks them. So I modified it because I'm so lazy. I'm not going to do that.
So I just make one giant flat log and cut them into like folded squares because I'm lazy. Yeah. It's also kind of Hawaiian roll-esque. Yeah. Isn't bad.
No, it's just massive amounts of butter. If you want to know why it's good, you make like what's funny is is that it's kind of like brioche, but like low on mine anyway, low on egg and high on milk. And it's kind of like brioche until you get to the shaping component of it. Then you realize this is awful. Yeah.
But then you don't like park? Yeah, but you can shaping them. Yeah, well, that's why you just roll, instead of doing the each individual thing, just like divide your dough into however many lines of rolls you're going to do, roll it real long, paint it long, fold it over and go quack, whack, whack and cut it. And then you're done. They're going to share steam anyway.
So it might as well. Right. And and I don't no one's like, these aren't semicircles. They're rising anyway. You know what I mean?
They're rising and they're going to bump into each other anyhow. Who needs the little semicircular thing? Also, I butter not not just in the dough, not just on the bottom of the pan and inside them, not just afterwards, but also before on top. Wow. Butter in the dough on the bottom, in the middle, on the top, two times.
Split them open, more butter at the table. Oh, yeah. Well, so that's funny, right? So, like my niece, Wiley's daughter, Wiley and Miley's daughter, comes in and I'm serving her these Parker House rolls because I made like 24 of them for the episode, right? And uh she's like, Can I have butter?
And I'm like, absolutely. I just want you to know that it's already about half butter by weight. She's like, I didn't ask you how much butter was in it. I asked for more butter now. And I was like, fair.
That's fair. It is. Yeah. Uh anyways, so Chang said, and you should go watch it, that it's the best stuffing stuffing he's ever had, and he wants to make my mom stuffing the most most popular stuffing. Oh, wow.
And it's simple to make, and it's very 1970s, because my mom came up with the recipe in the early 1970s as an agglomeration, actually, of my dad's mom's stuffing. Because my my other grandma's stuffing no good. And uh, she's dead though. She's dead. She's dead.
They're all dead. I can say whatever I like. They're all dead. Uh, you know, you can speak ill of the dead stuffing. Am I right, John?
Sure. Okay. And uh he says that it's simple, uses only ingredients you can source in the 1970s. Which means that everything is out of a can. That well, I mean, you have to saute mushrooms.
My mom didn't use canned mushrooms. My mom was progressive 70s person. You know what I mean? So, like uh So no cream and mushroom soup? No.
That was a staple of my grandma. Yeah? Cream mushroom soup made its way into everything. Can I tell you the secret in my the secret in my in in my mom's stuffing, two secrets, three secrets. One, poultry seasoning, right?
70s-style, poultry seasoning, right? Two, lots of pork sausage that kind that come in a tube. You know that Jones. We used Jones, but you could use Jimmy Dean or or or uh what's that? There's a parks.
You could use any of those. As long as it's sagy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sagey tube of meat. Like a lot of that.
One more secret. Not dried bread, fresh bread, but semi-dense white bread, pepper farm style, and the kicker, canned mandarin oranges. So something that can soak up a ton of fat. Which is also in that. Like a there's a lot of butter in that too.
Well, yeah. Butter and when you bake it, does it almost come out like a Detroit-style pizza on the outside? Like super crispy all the way around. Depends on how you cook it. So like we typically like the stuff that's in the bird just absorbs bird juice and comes out like a like a bird bread pudding, like a like a like a turkey bread pudding.
And then we used to throw it in a casserole with the uh with the aluminum on the top so that it would it would it would steam itself first, and then we rip off the aluminum and crust the top off of it. And yeah, it gets that crispy, crunchy stuff on top, and then like you know, bread pudding underneath. Now here's the question. Do you prefer the stuff that was cooked in the bird or the stuff that was cooked more like a dressing? Okay.
The taste of the stuff that's in the bird is inherently superior. However, the texture of the stuff that's cooked casserole style is a little bit better. So you make it. So you do a texture or a flavor person, is the question. I have to choose in this one.
Yeah. I think the ultimate would be to th to to mix some stock in with the casserole style. I want to bake it. But have you tried that yet? Chang did.
I didn't. I cook mine with tons of stock in it. Really? You have to emulsify it as it cooks. So the bread, the starch, the fats, and the stock all make that bread pudding style that you were just talking about.
I always I always bone out my birds before I cook them because you know how to cook. Right. Right, right. So I bone out the birds, and then I I have a crap ton of turkey stock every Thanksgiving, right? And so I usually make like a lot of gravy.
And so like I don't worry about because so even in the casserole one, I'm gonna dump like real strong turkey gravy on it. So that's how I took, but I should just put some stock into the stuffing. But don't change it because it's already superior to everybody else's, right? Well, according to Dave, I don't make these kind of claims. But he did he did already switch it.
He he didn't he couldn't find poultry seasoning, so for some reason he chose Saison, what? Sage and he's in California. I don't know. Of course, that's where my mom invented anyway. So like he he did like uh like sage and uh and chicken chicken stock paste.
Yeah, I was gonna say like a bouillon cube. Yeah. Problem with bouillon cube, I I have the calculation somewhere, uh, is is you're putting in like a lot of salt. Just be aware to down your salt because I salt all my ingredients as my mom does as I'm cooking. So when I sweat the onions and celery, they get salted, everything gets salted to the way that that thing tastes good, and then when it all goes together, it only needs a little bit of correction.
Can I interject for one quick minute? Of course. It turns out that one of our listeners' mothers is a supervisor at the Butterball Turkey Outline. Oh my god. Sometimes you just have to say it out loud and dreams come true.
Oh my God. So wait. Oh my God. I wonder what it's too late to have them on this year. So is she the kind of person that when you ask, can I please speak to a supervisor, you get transferred over to her?
I guess. I don't know. We'll see what he comments. But that's the same thing. So you have to come on with a massive problem and then try to get uh upgraded into the ones, yeah, exactly.
So the question, right? The question is, right, and this is what you're hitting at, Craig, is there some sort of like super low-level call center person who's gonna take the call who's never actually cooked a turkey before. Right. They're like, have you rebooted the turkey? You know what I mean?
Did you unplug and replug magnetic? Right. Did you unplug the turkey for 30 seconds and plug it back in? And they're like, oh, wait, wait. Oh, oh, turkey.
You know what I mean? Like something like that. Or is everyone a trained cook who picks up the phone? Ooh. In which case, maybe you need to come on with such a high level question that you need to weed out the entry level.
Yeah. Yeah. Or like, you know, I mean, and I think it's more interesting to come up with real questions rather than like, I'm on fire, I'm on fire. You know, like all this safety deep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hang up, call 911. You could also be ridiculous and say, I'm having problems executing my mother's stuffing. Could you please help me? Something that they nobody can help you with. Right.
Or Stas, we could call them with bionic turkey questions. So, right? I think everyone's sick of that. Well, no, only three people know about it. So how can everyone be sick of it?
Those three people are sick of it. Very. They're very vocal. People at Butterball won't know it. Well, Nastasia's sick of anything related to cooking.
Am I right, Stas? No. Yeah. So speaking of uh before we get into bagel questions, anyone cook anything or have any interesting culinary things happened to them in the past week? No.
I got some good stuff from Edwards Age Meats. Oh, what'd you get? Uh I got beef crack. I got aged pork belly, which I haven't had before. Uh you never had bacon?
Well, I mean, like dry eggs. Yeah. Uh dry uh then uh some ribeye. Oh, some good, you know, some uh yeah, some age pork. He makes great products.
I'm gonna be pork is uh very cheesy. Yeah? That's what I always find. I'll let you know when I uh I used to ferment a lot of sausage and uh it's it's very cheesy. Yeah, who likes to ferment their ribs is uh is um uh Andy Ricker.
He used to do like fermented Thai ribs. It's it's quite popular in uh Asian cuisine to ferment your pork before you get into the next infusion step of like you know, sausage making or whatever it is. Yeah, back in the day he was uh having real issues figuring out how he was gonna do that and uh not run afoul of uh Dio uh age problems. You know what I mean? Hide in the office.
Yeah. Real quick for everyone wondering, it's Edwards Aged Meats.com, and I think his social media handle is the same. His stuff is great. Yeah, you guys gotta keep separate. Edwards Aged Meats from Sam Edwards Country Ham.
They are two different people on two different sides of the United States, right? One aged ham for several hundred years. They've been making it, right? In the in the what's that called? The uh Surrey, Surrey, Virginia, what's that called?
Tidewater area of Virginia, right? And the other one, where's where where's uh where's Edward's age? They're in California, right? Yeah, Santa Clara, I believe. I've never been.
Yeah, neither have I. Never been. Yeah. Stas, you've been there, right? No.
Really? Huh. Okay. Uh all right. Well, if no one has any We we uh we're unveiling our babka program week.
So we've uh just concluded over uh month and a half of arduous babka baking. So that was that was interesting. Uh we broke bread this morning and it was uh we got it. So what's your babka target? I'm not saying there's a best worst.
What's your target for babka? Like uh um And did you grow up eating babka? No. Okay. I didn't grow up with I grew up with a heavy Jewish community, but like our definition of bagels was very Dunkin' Donuts-y.
Oh, geez, Louise. And uh that's okay, because it's gotta start somewhere. Okay. And uh past that, no, not a lot of Rogala Hamintoschen or all the really good stuff that we now uh become obsessed with. But for babka, it's gotta have the pull apart quality of a monkey bread.
Okay, has to have the flakiness of a cuissant in some way without laminating, because we don't laminate, and not too much chocolate. High quality level of chocolate, so that you're relying more on your techniques so that when you take a bite of the cinnamon babka, that's where you really are impressing people. And so where is everybody starts with a chocolate babka? Right. Where are you on the dryness scale?
Not at all. That was our biggest problem. Okay, yeah. So you don't but I think some people actually like a slightly dry babka. Well I'm not saying that they're right or wrong.
That's chocolate bread. All right. That's that's still a lot of the conversation that we were having is how bready versus how babka-y are we right now, which babka e we hope that will be approved as a word someday because we use it quite often. Instead of babka like or babka similar babka e. But yeah, bab babki bob bob sounds like babkas though.
Why not? All right. Uh but you know my style. I I like throwing away a lot of the rules and just uh going for what it is that we that that we believe is a good quality product. Well, that's certainly true.
So let's get into this style and why why I I had you. First of all, you brought bagels. We have bagels in front of us. All right, so you should pull out one of these bagels because John, you've never had these before, right? No.
It's does you've never had it. Joey never had it. Don't eat out of the ones that are in the bag in front of you. All right. Eat out of this one because the crust is still there, the integrity of the outside is still there.
So here, pass them around. You know, I washed my hands at least. So you remember you remember these though, right? They were they're not as quite high on the height level as a lot of the other bagels that you had. The darkness of them is uh way different.
Um also like our entire process is completely different. You see all the bubbles. So you look at you look at one of these bagels, and I'll I'll I'll visualize this for you if you can't see it, is that they they are they have it's like you know how um like modern cars, they're glossy and matte at the same time. Like, you know how like you you see those beamers with that like kind of semi-shiny, that semi-shiny coat. It's like one, it's one of those.
And there's like also look at the blistering on that sucker, right? So that's non-traditional for uh, you know, most you know, New York bagels to see kind of a uh uh a blister level like that. So, first of all, the minute you look at it, you're like, oh, that's a different, right? Yeah, and then you know, you you rip it, and the crust, right, has that awesome kind of chewiness, it's got a good thickness. It's got leather and crisp.
But the inside, oh by the way, I brought God's cream cheese, Rust and Daughters. You've got Rust and Daughters cream cheese. Of course, yeah. Uh we we ate a lot of Rust and Daughters when we were looking uh into being a bagel shop. Yeah, Rust and what do you do?
Are you on Philly for cream or do you do you have some like sort of fancy? We have a we fabricate up a filly, uh, but we are always in the market for uh adaptation and evolution. So um we worked on our bagel for the past three years, and uh the eventually a target will go on to our cream cheese's back and we will completely rip open whatever program we're doing right now and reinvent it. Yeah, because I because uh at Russ and Daughters, all of their flavored cream cheeses are filly. And the plain one is they won't tell you.
They won't tell you. But we will we do we even the plain one we fabricate up. So it's you know, it's similar to what they do. Like it's it you can't ever have a consumer think that they're getting something that they can get at a gro grocery store. You always have to be elevating it in some way, shape, or form.
Yeah. I've already eaten two omo bagels this morning. So these are for all you guys. The uh so what what's awesome about is that the texture on the inside, like it's still substantial, but it's not at all sweet. Okay, so you know how like like modern bagels, they're they're jacked with so much malt and maybe sugar, right?
That it's they can almost get stick to your teeth gummy. So gummy. And there's none of that in this bagel. Like none of it. Such a light amount of malt that goes into it.
We use the outside um uh to get a little bit of malt flavor on it as well. But again, it's you're so diluted because we use thyme as uh more of our um control than we do by additive ingredients. Right. So if you look at the inside of the bagel also, it's clearly not made with white flour. Right.
And so that's what kind of struck me. And then when I started talking to you more, because again, I think you're you put so much work into the bagel itself that you have no problem telling everybody, it's not like there's some sort of magic flip uh switch you can flip and all of a sudden make this bagel. You have to put the work in. I guess your theory, I don't know what you tell me, is that no one's gonna do that, so I'll just tell you everything I do. I I told you everything I do.
Now that you have me on a little bit bigger of a platform, I I may keep a couple of things to myself. But I I will open up as much as I possibly can about this process because it's quite cool. Right. So the first thing is first is that you're using a kind of flour that I want everybody in the country to use. And I don't know what you call it, I call it high extraction flour.
I don't know what you call it. Yeah, high extraction or bolted is uh uh what usually like a small mill will call it um but very similar process. Yeah, so you want to talk about this flour? Yeah, so we use uh ground up as our mill uh that's based out of Holyoke, Massachusetts. They source uh from three different farms, two out of uh New York and one out of Maine.
The one from Maine is like it might as well be Canada. It's like right on the New Brunswick uh border. Um but it's a hard red winter wheat. Um we are um we're scheduling a a visit up to the actual mill to uh determine if it is a warthog or not. But from uh my past baking experiences, I bel I believe we are using uh uh warthog grain.
Uh but coming from the three different farms, it could just be uh a little bit of a blend. Uh there is some spring um red winter wheat in there, or uh some red spring wheat in there as well. The difference between those two is uh just kind of like the uh the timing of uh how long it takes for the uh grain to be harvested and how much uh you could call it flavor is developed right you know a little bit different. But high extraction is your answer. Everyone who knows milling wheat, right?
Knows not not modern milling, not roller milling, right? That winter wheat tastes better than spring wheat. Yeah. I I I hope that we're always using red uh, you know, winter wheat, but as a majority, as a majority, yeah, yeah. Spring wheat's gonna add like more structure, more of it, but like warthog's a delicious wheat.
I've milled, I don't know, only not like, you know, I've only milled like 50, 60 pounds of it, but I like warthog a lot. You know what I mean? And the high extraction flour, what people don't winter wheat, right, was the standard wheat, both soft and hard winter wheat was the standard wheat in the United States up until the 1870s. And the reason is is that uh we didn't have the technology to get all of the bran off, right? First of all, it's the spring wheat is a lot harder.
It has higher gluten. They could not make decent what we're calling bolted flour just means sifted, right? And they couldn't get as as good a tasting flour out of spring wheat before they invented um before they invented uh the um these blowers that would blow the bran off and they could they could do it in two parts and they could separate the bran more effectively. So it actually happened before the advent of the roller mill. So that's what's called patent.
The original patent flour was the patent on these machines that allowed them to effectively separate the bran and then allow them to mill good flour from spring wheat. But when it's whole wheat, spring wheat typically doesn't taste as good as winter. So you want majority winter wheat in your blends if you're gonna go anywhere close to whole wheat. And if any of you have ever had whole wheat flour and been like used it and said this sucks, it's because you're using roller milled whole wheat flour. You're not and it's whole wheat.
This is bolted, so it's like what's your extraction on this? 82. So 82% of the wheat kernel makes it into this bagel. 82%, right? And what doesn't make it in, sure, is mostly bran, right?
But there's a lot of germ in this, right? A lot of the flavor, and none of the harshness and bitterness. Like not one, not a speck. Anyone who's cooked with this or baked with this high extraction flour, I can tell you, it is a freaking joy. Right or wrong.
It's a joy. Uh flavor-wise. Depends on where you're at in the process. It's also a throw away your recipe book uh kind of experience. But yes, once you learn to harness it, it is uh you really can't look back.
Right, because it just the taste is so good. And so like the thing is is that like, you know, the bagel, I guess it's not as much of a thing, but like in breads, like in hearth breads, you're not gonna get as much of it. You're not gonna get that like uh no-need interior without a lot of like finagling. You're not gonna get those giant airy holes, you're not gonna get the but like side by side, the taste of it is so addictive. The taste of that tastes like you're eating real bread, like what uh what it should be.
And there's also such a big problem with uh commercially milled whole wheat because of how fast they're milling at. They're actually heating up the bran on the outside, which that is then basically turning bad inside of these bags of flour that are being sold on uh on the shelves. So it's you you're just not getting the true flavor, the clean flavor of the flour. Also, I've tried to I've I'm I'm I've tried to figure out a way to like commercial whole wheat. I really have for the book I'm writing.
And uh in their in their bread whole wheat things, they're always doping it with like I think a lot of spring to try to get that wheat to try to get that gluten level back up because it's gonna get lowered by the fact that they add all the bran. So right away, that's a mistake, I think, for flavor. And then they're also, I think, remilling the brand. So if you've ever made flour and if you've ever made flour uh and not sifted it, the brand particles are a lot bigger than they are in whole wheat flour for that. So like Is that so that they're they're making it so that the home cook doesn't have to adjust their hydration levels?
I think so. So like it uh it the brand is actually absorbing some of the water or something. Well, the br I think what it is is they don't want the flour to feel that different, or they I think they think that like they're gonna deflate it more if they have like uh bigger brand pieces, but I think that the remilling the brand so fine, I think that's why it's so bitter. And plus it's old, right? It's old.
It's so old. But even if it wasn't old, I think it's just it's I think it's just the tiny tiny brand. I think it isn't. That I was I was introduced to that when I first started baking, and I was like, Oh. Right.
Now so people out there who are professional bakers but who haven't gotten into this kind of relatively new again, like this 1860s world of what flour should be, right? Bear in mind that yes, I'm aware that white flour gets better as it ages, which is why you oxidize it, you bleach it, right? And not this not true with uh the high the high extraction flours. I'm sure there is some baking potential that gets better over time, but they don't I I've tested, by the way, on on high extraction flour from zero to three months. And it was fairly stable over that three months.
I haven't done a year or anything like that. But so don't don't think of aging white flour the same way you think of uh the high extraction flour. So my first question to you before I get to the questions other people have is what's it like like how much more does it cost to buy this kind of flour as opposed to because I make it at home. I don't have to consume it as a it's not an input. Twice.
And how much of the bagels cost? Well not really twice. It's it's more like three times, but yeah. It's it's a slightly different hydration level, so you are cutting it with a little bit more water, which is helpful. I've never had a obviously never had a bagel business.
How much of a bagel is labor and how much is cost of goods? We switched over to a bagel machine um in two thousand late 2020 as a Christmas gift to ourselves for making it through the pandemic uh uh and not having uh to fold the restaurant. So uh we've managed to keep labor low because of that. Um so we invest mostly in our product and our infrastructure. Right.
But in other words, like in theory, spending three times as much on my flour equals what to a consumer. I if you were going to actually just pass it up the chain to them, like oh, I mean, uh figure this in a restaurant, every single time you pay 30 cents for the restaurant owner, you're always paying a dollar as the consumer. Right. Just plain and simple. So if I'm saying that your King Arthur flour that you're buying in the grocery store is I don't know, I haven't bought one in a while.
It's just still from the restaurant. But like uh, you know, let's say a bag is ten bucks and I'm telling you that it's double to triple. Right. You know, just imagine going to the grocery store and paying thirty dollars for your flour. It's pretty crazy.
Right. But the good news is, right? I mean, I know it's your primary input probably for the bagel. I'm sure I'm sure fish and cream cheese is fantastically more expensive, but like uh it's your primary input for the bagel. But even though it is three times as much, it's kind of like razors.
Even though a Gillette Mach three or whatever they are, Mach 3,000 and five, whatever they are now, even though they're like 20 times what a normal razor costs, they're still affordable to people. Right. So we're I mean, we're at two dollars a bagel right now in the shop and uh at that bagel fest that we met at, there were shops that were selling their bagels for two twenty five. I I'm much more proud of our product than I was of tasting uh some of the other things that was there because you can tell, as you and I talked about, you know instantly when uh somebody's using a bleach bromated flour. There was even a comment from one of the booths right next to me after they were asking about our grains.
Um they're saying, Oh, well, I can't even uh because I'm in New York, I can't afford to do that. So me being in a small market, sure they can, they need to charge for it, but me being in a small market and having my business not cost as much to be in a small market is very helpful for me. Yeah. So on the other hand, you're you don't in New Haven, again, I lived in New Haven for you know years, and you don't have the necessarily built-in market of bagel freaks that you would have here. So there's there's two sides to that coin.
No, we opened up with a very New York-y menu, uh, and it just didn't fly at first, you know. Um, and so we really needed to keep our ears open in order to stay above water through the pandemic to say, like, oh, this is what you want? Okay, let's give that a shot. And uh, so we kept evolving the menu and we continue to do that as we're mainly student-based, being right off of uh Yale's campus, which helps us a lot. Yeah.
Uh and so each class brings a different uh desire for uh menu choices. And so we're always looking at our model, saying, like, how do we how do we improve according to the taste buds of today? So you told me it was funny at the bagel fest. You told me that um, you know, they didn't sell to anyone along the 95 corridor that basically all the flour went directly from where it was milled, like down the corridor to New York and like nothing in between. And you were like, you just have to like look off the highway, and I'm right there.
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because we were working with uh, you know, shout out to Myers Produce, who is the one who does who coordinates all the deliveries with uh ground up. And uh, so I was talking with Annie Myers when I first opened up, and I just said, you know, hey, is there a way that I could get that Brooklyn product that you were giving me? That's all from new New England.
Can I get that in New England? And she's like, I don't know. You know, we're we're very much based off I was like, no, no, and I I literally sent her over a map image of like this is how far off the highway we are. There's a literal exit for the bakery almost. Like, you know what I mean?
From the street, right? They're great. They they deliver uh we have to pre-order about a month in advance for our milling. And that has uh that was a hard adjustment in the beginning because normally you can just get all your flour tomorrow. Right.
Um and also it probably makes it almost like like a liquor inventory is that you actually have money in inventory in a way you wouldn't necessarily have. Yeah, fortunately we haven't um gone into the world of futures yet, where I'm buying crops worth of stuff, but uh who knows, maybe someday I well, so does it make you nervous? And like I'm always wondering about the scalability of this, because I was trying to convince Chang on this menu thing I was telling you about, I was like, have them make the Parker House rolls with high extraction flour. He's like, Where can where can I tell people to buy high extraction flour? I'm like, I don't know.
I don't know. You know, you can get it, uh I think ground up uh, you know, uh you would be better at pulling up their website, but uh I believe you can just order direct from them. So they sell to humans? Yeah, they call it their bread flour. And it's 82% high extraction, it's 13.6% protein, which is about 1.4% lower than what's on the shelves.
So you are gonna need to adapt for that. Well, you and I also know that the protein numbers on anything with whole wheat's a lie because uh because uh the brand has such a higher protein level in it, but it's not gluten, which is why they should raise weight. You want you want the other part, but yeah, yeah. But at the same yeah, so like 13.6 is a high number for a high extraction on the protein, but you don't get a hundred percent yield off of that, which is actually more like 11 in change, right? Yeah uh yeah, in the 10 range, even.
Um because we've tried side by side with testing out rye bagels and whatnot. I mean, rye is like, you know, rye comes in at 10% protein, and it's as if you're just using absolutely nothing. There's no spring in rye bread. I cannot wrap my head around rye baking. I haven't tried too much.
I have a bunch of rye. Leave it underneath your baking table and revisit it when it looks like a puddle of not bread and then bake that. And that's rye bread. Yeah, yeah, I know. Like I have a bunch of rye.
Anyway, whatever. I love the taste of rye, but like I don't know. I haven't invested the time to write. We we only do rye when we're doing rye. The rye makes it its way into our pasta program, and that's about it.
Yeah. Okay. So that's the flow. But so do you get nervous? How would you expand?
Like, is there is there a way for more people in the country to get this kind of flour or not? Like, is this something that can grow or not? What a what a uh what a hard assessment on U.S. agriculture we're about to make right now. The system's completely broken.
I'll just start there. Um yes, you can, but you're gonna need to really seek out to find more distribution outlets like uh Myers produce, like we do. Like they're not the biggest easiest thing to find. So like uh, you know, local doesn't always mean better. I do believe that.
But at the same time, the quality of ingredients do, and so you it finding the distribution is just your hardest part. Then then you're talking about the cost. Then you're talking about the labor and the thought process and intellect that goes into making something like this. It's you it's an uphill battle, but I think it starts with serving your bagels like this and spreading the word about it. Yeah, because also distributions of paints, because so you if you were willing to pay 10 times as much, right?
You can get Anson Mills. They make good quality products, but then you have to buy it from them. They ship once a week. And then there's this whole kind of McGill. It's hard to just walk into a place and buy this stuff.
And at what point, if we all jump on board with all this, how are we now starting to push the system of uh what these farms stand for and at what point do they start putting nitrogen into their ground in order to be able to keep up with volume? Or not mill it the same way. Or just or not mill it and speed it up. So like, you know, this is it's a it's a hard topic. But yeah, well, look, I mean, there's a place for roller milled white flour.
It makes great products if that's what you're looking for. It's just I happen to have fallen in love with this particular type of flour. Me too. Yeah. I r I I really wish for the bottom line I didn't, but it is what it is.
So then okay, so that's the first thing you do that's not standard. And by the way, I haven't tasted every bagel on earth, but I've never tasted someone who uses flour in a bagel in a bagel business, who their job is to make bagels for people, not just as a one-off or something like this, who's not also their own miller, which is interesting, right? Because there are people whose model is I'm gonna do my own milling. We had Adam Leonte on, you know, and he's like, you know, I'm doing my own milling. Not a bagel guy, but I mean, I'm sure he's made bagels, but that's not his thing.
But it's like to have someone saying, I'm gonna make the commitment to buy this kind of mill flour to make a bagel, that was the first thing. I was like, okay, I need to have you on the show. Second, right? How long is this bagel fermenting? Forty eight hours.
Forty eight hours. And what's so you told me that that was bizarre. And I look actually the one that I fed you was 72. Yeah. Yeah.
Um Yeah, we threw away our recipe books to be able to create that. I'd I still I'd I'd actually love to hear from you is again as to I I kind of don't understand how people haven't been able to achieve that. You told me that uh some people have tried doing it and they don't they don't get a product out of it or something. Well, you're not just okay, so like take take pizza, right? Where people are doing like long, long ferments, right?
They're doing the ferment, they're doing their what they call in the proof, right? But it's not a shaped, I mean it's shaped, but it's then they're they're shaping it right before they make it, right? Right. You know, you're actually shaping like you're doing an you're doing an overnight you're not it's not wait, tell me again, you're you you don't do an overnight bulk. You do an overnight bulk.
No, no overnight bulk. Goes straight from you because uh we don't allow for air to start. So under you under hydrate the dough. Right. Well, that's the key.
You have to underhydrate and not activate your yeast. Right. The the key is right on a long ferment. So bagels are relatively low relatively low hydration. Yeah, like fifty, you know, fifty to fifty-five percent.
Sure. So on a low hydration, right? Like on or on for any given hydration on a long proof, especially on this kind of a flower, it's gonna go more slack on you as you go, and you're not gonna have so you have to make it even stiffer at the beginning, especially when the cause the whole wheat compound is so thirsty, right? One, it's thirsty, but two, like I think it's such a the first time that somebody ever called a walk-in or a refrigerator, a humid environment, like I just I wanted to argue with them instantly. It just it did not make sense whatsoever.
And then you actually start to practice like that, and you realize that like I don't even know. I'm because I'm not a scientist, I can't break it down, but like I gotta imagine that when we bake this, we're somewhere in the 60s, close to 70% on our hydration just because of how much it's soaked up in refrigeration, right? Because it's wrapped up in on trays already shaped, and just inside of that is that that humid environment is just the you know the flour is just soaking it all up. Well, and also like uh I mean the brand's gonna be the brand, right? But then the damaged starch is some of it's gonna get converted to sugar from the from the enzymes, and then that stuff's gonna release more water, and in a 24, 48-hour environment, more of that's gonna take place than would take place in a couple hours fermentation.
And the challenge is that water equals activity in bread. So if you're creating all this activity, you're gonna get an overproofed product. But as you can see, just from simple bakers standpoint, the there's no giant hole at the very top of our crust, therefore it's not overproofed. Right. So second that's a second non-standard thing.
So then okay, I said this. How I said, how long did you do you boil your bagels? And what'd you tell me? We don't boil our bagels. Hear that, John?
I heard it. No boil on the bagel. What did you think, John? Was that a boiled bagel when you put your mouth in on it? Yeah, a little bit, I guess.
Yeah, dude. Look at the crust on it. Yeah. So how do you do it? This is this is a chef's mind because you started from fine dining as a chef, not you can come in as a baker.
Yeah, so I got introduced into molecular gastronomy or whatever that's called uh while I was up in Boston. I worked underneath uh three food and wines best new chefs, which were uh Mary Dumont, Gabriel Bremer, and Tim Maslow. And uh they all liked to um uh push the boundaries of where the future of food were going. And uh so as a line cook and or chef for them, I was uh learning all these new techniques and introduced all this new cooking equipment. And I came across one day this beautiful piece of cooking equipment that I had to have.
It's called a rationale oven. Uh yeah. Uh uh, they're basically computers attached to a perfect convection oven. Um I bought one for the restaurant because I wanted to standardize our chicken, our steaks. Because it almost started not as bagels.
Yeah, we were a sit-down restaurant. We were going after we were trying to reinvent fine dining in Connecticut. No white tablecloths, ripped ripped jeans, t-shirt, perfect wine service, high high-end executed simple food. Um so the rationale oven was helping us achieve the perfection of the cooking. Right.
And with the pandemic, I have a very tight space. Uh so we shut down our dining room without even being told to. It just was the right thing to do. But we transitioned into a bagel shop, which bagels were kind of like a side project for me to pay for the baker essentially, uh, in the mornings. Um it was a side hustle that we just I had to get rid of everybody and I turned into a bagel machine myself and sold bagels to make our money, and the line went out the door, never went away, and I was left with a rationale oven.
Well, and you told me right that you know it was a way to do something that was honorable, that you could think a lot about and like grow from a cooking perspective in, but still have it be takeaway. Yeah, everybody had two dollars in their pocket, right? The pandemic started, everybody freaked out where all their money was gonna go, right? So we thought to ourselves, let's take a step back. Let's lower the price of all of our products while everybody's about to be rising and raising their prices.
So we we did the opposite. We scaled back everything. We came up with a very simple $2 product, right? And started from there. Um but with getting rid of everybody, uh forcefully, I I was left with doing the business, the cleaning, uh, the the shop maintenance and uh the recipe testing and whatnot.
So um I was boiling bagels one morning, and we just like kind of looked at the rationale oven sideways and said, if that thing goes to 212 degrees with a full steam setting, and you put the convection all the way up, is it a pot of boiling water? So we threw some bagels in, and uh now all of a sudden payroll was able to be done in in while I was baking bagels or or boiling bagels, right? And so we just uh we stuck with the steaming process. We didn't advertise it because we knew how much New Yorkers, especially would be turned off by saying that we aren't a water bagel. And uh we've been making New Yorkers uh happy in the little city of uh New Haven since 2020 with our bagel shop.
Right. And so for those of you that are like, that's not just go have the bagel. Just go have the bagel. So interesting. I I uh I always tell people um, you know, this is this is our interpretation.
This is our way to uh make sure that the staff is uh met with uh a good paycheck and for my family to be able to have a meal on the table, and whatever your opinion is about a bagel is your opinion, but this is our product and we stick to it. And it is it here's what I'm gonna say about it before I ask the some questions from listeners is that it uh it hits the notes you want out of a traditional bagel. So it's it's not a traditional bagel because of because of how it's made, because of the flour they use, but it hits all the notes that you want, plus, in my opinion. That's my opinion. Now, here's some questions.
Now, and and I'm nervous about these. No, no, no. So, like, there's two people that asked the same question. Matt from Mystic and Cam Ronco both want to know, and that the funny it's the the secret is so obvious once you told me, because I asked you this. I asked you this exact question.
Uh what is the secret to preventing the onion component in an onion bagel? And Matt also wants to know, slash garlic component from burning on an everything bagel or on an onion bagel. What's the secret? And it as soon as you said it, I was like, you know what I mean? I mean, uh for you, the secret for you.
I hope that I say it right, but I I I have to speak from my heart, and I hope that that's where I was saying it. Uh we're very fortunate. Direct me if I'm saying it right. We're very fortunate that we're in the city of New Haven. So, like, people like burnt things in New Haven with the burnt bottom.
So that's that's one. Yeah, but I had your onion, they're not scorched. They're not scorched. Because well, all right. So you so the answer you gave me, I'll give you afterwards if you don't get the same one.
We seed the day before. Right. Okay. So therefore, they are hydrated instead of a dried product going on top. He steams the god danged onions.
Yeah, the onions get steamed with the whole process. So all the seeds get steamed with the bagel, which actually acts as a glue. So when you take there's a sesame bagel in that bag, try and brush a sesame, try and brush one sesame seed. Take a look at that bagel. Take a look at that.
So I was like, almost like, oh my god, that's so genius, because you're not boiling it. You don't have to seed it when it's wet. Right. No, the onion itself is wet going into the onion. And it doesn't scorch.
Because you know what, you know what sucks? It sucks is prehydrating the onions and then trying to stick them to the outside of a bagel. No, it wasn't it doesn't work. You take a dried onion with mold and sea salt and you take a wet or your we wet our bagels down with malted water and then we stick the onions to it and then that sits for a whole day. So that's phase two of the product process.
And uh so they get steamed and baked with they've already sat they're all they're all predetermined for tomorrow. So there's an argument right there for steaming. I'll say this for for users of the uh ANOVA precision oven I have one and I like it. It's not powerful enough to do that kind of steaming. And I'll say this the reason I'll tell you that is because it's running off of a 120 socket.
I I've never tried the bagels that way. I always boiled them. However I have tried things like dumplings and they take a longer when that leads me to believe that it's not going to work this it it's not even you can't even compare the I've tried a lot of different of these products. It's not even like saying like this is the Cadillac it's like no this is the car and then everything else is a bicycle. Like they're they're the this is the highest powered fan the highest powered injection of water.
They're the only ones that that uh store hot water in it so when it steam injects you don't lower the temperature of the oven like it's this is it it's you can really only do it out of this. I know of one other place that does it down in Durham Lord North Carolina buddy of mine but that's it. Yeah I haven't been to Durham in many years uh decades in fact uh the and they have great pulled pork down there. I love anyway um I should go back someday. So for those of you that want to do uh steaming at at home uh like large quantities go get a uh go get like a a four and a half inch full size hotel pan and then a two and a half inch perf pan with a half with a with a they make uh cooling racks for hotel pans stick that into the perf and then get one of the lids on top and you know not for restaurants but for home you can do that's the largest thing you and you can stick it on two burners on your stove and that's about as close you can get to real monster steaming at home I think so the and the benefit the let's not overlook the benefit of the uh everything steams for the exact same amount of time right so there's that control element when you boil a bagel I don't care if you're boiling two bagels, six bagels at a time by the time you get to that last bagel, it has boiled for more time than your first bagel.
So there's an inconsistency across the board with that right away. So like with steaming, if you take that steam tray out of your oven like you just talked about, the moment that you unveil what's inside of it, the steam is gone. You're you're not at 212 anymore. The the entire process is gone. So you're you're you're much more controlled on your on your process.
Right. And so then I asked you this and you said because like I I I have never thought of doing this in a rationale and I haven't had access to one since the since I left the culinary school. Um what uh like how fast can it ramp from steam to bake? Like what's like what's the fast yeah power. That's a thing fast.
Power. We actually we have two of them we're such a uh a funky looking restaurant it not we we're clearly not backed by uh millions and millions of dollars it's it's uh a much more of a mom and pop feel so one of our rationales is a half size and one of the rationales is a whole size and we there are two completely different settings in order to be able to get the same product out of it because the amount of convection that happens in the half size is so much stronger than the one that happens in the full size. And I'm talking about width of sheet tray for those here who are wondering what kind of language I'm speaking. Yeah, yeah. And but are they uh are they both same height, single height or they the double height?
We're we're in a basement space uh for our production. So they uh we're restricted by our ceiling and hood size. So uh we uh we pump out about 360 bagels every let's just call it 20 minutes. Yeah and your are your rationales are they electric or gas? Both.
Right. But in other words, so like the the heating element. Yeah the heating element we do gas. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Uh the rest of the entire restaurant is electric. Right. It's just the only gas line that we have. I you know I know some people that have all electric and the electric it's not that I'm not saying the the bill right because the whole world's moving that way. I'm saying just the service you need is nuts because it just as you say unlimited power.
You know what I mean? It's like we didn't we we've also just heard from other chefs that the gas powered one is just a better made piece of equipment. The they're not quite there on the electric technology. Yeah the electric I remember uh I was uh working with someone and I looked at their breaker panel for for just a single you know the the one that's like the one that's like that. So it's not like a full height but it's not that this one it's like you know the two thirds whatever you call it height.
And uh I looked at the breaker panel. I was like that's twice as much electricity they as goes into my whole apartment. The whole apartment. I was like we have we have two of those we have two of those and that you will laugh when you see the size of our restaurant being like there's no way you need two of those. Restaurant restaurants use a lot of electricity.
Well so that that's the other thing is like uh so right, I wonder because rationales are still a lot more expensive than than a deck. Than like a blogget, right. Yeah. Or or even like yeah, inexpensive deck. Yeah, yeah.
Uh but I wonder what the ROI is because you don't have to do the boiling, you don't have to like for labor and all that. Wonder what the auto money is. How many people stand in front of the uh the kettle at uh Essa while they bake? I don't know. I've been to Essa in a long time.
I've had their bagels recently, but I haven't been there recently. Or how many people stand in front of a kettle? Yeah. That's what you're removing out of our out of our uh model. Yeah.
Which is we we we do hire a lot of people. We just keep them on you know, other things like getting bagels to people, like guest services. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Uh Michael Vahabi writes, what kind well, we just talked about it.
What kind of oven do you use and recommendations for oven? I mean, you've come out pretty str pretty strongly on the uh on the side of the rationale. Yeah, I I love the standardization of food. And they don't break as much as they used to. Rationales used to break like a mother.
I have my original rationale versus the new one that I have has had zero service calls on it as opposed to the five that I've had this year on the new one. So uh yeah. Well, you know what used to go wrong on that? I love warranties. The old uh what do they even call them now?
They used to be called SCCs. Are they still called self-cooking centers or no? I think so, but yeah, we're it's an oven. The old SCCs, if you put them into a normal like, you know, kitchen, like we used to have them for, you know, we had a couple at the school, and one of them was in the restaurant, and the one that was in a restaurant was next to another hot side thing. You know what I mean?
It wasn't like completely unsurrounded by anything around it. And the electronics would fry like regularly. Regularly they would fry. And without the electronics, it's useless. Yeah, it's a brick.
You know what I mean? So like uh, but that doesn't happen anymore. They fix that. Yeah, the uh rationale's been a really great uh company for us to work with. So yeah, it's like it's so funny when things go from I'd love I'd love some sponsorship from them.
You hear that rationale? You hear that? Send me a new oven. The thing about the uh like a German company like that, uh is that they're probably like, well, well, don't put it next to something hot. You're like, that's not my life.
That's not my life. I have X amount of hood space and this is my reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, yeah, manufacturers are so funny. That's like uh it used to be it used to be everyone remember this is like I don't know, 15 years ago, everyone was like, Well, we want to put induction in so that you know it so it doesn't get so hot in the kitchen and we know we want to go electric, etc.
And then they would always undersize, they would want to put induction range over uh an oven. Right, right. And they would always undersize the cooling fans, not to mention like cooks would go slam with a pot and break the tops constantly. But like they would always burn out and and they're like, Well, you can't you can't run it full blast all the time. You're like, you don't understand, I'm gonna run it full blast all the time.
But I will say this. We went induction in our original build out of our what is now the bagel line. We went full induction because so long as you write the first menu having no fat on it, you can do a uh you can do a different hood, which can save you up to a hundred thousand dollars on your build out. I like that. So just get it get a couple extra units and they it's worth the break.
And now all of a sudden you're you're there. Yeah. Okay, we got a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave.
Um it's uh Paul from Seattle. Um I uh the I am uh given a call on um on some bagel stuff. I uh have been working on bagels on and off for a couple of years. And in fact, I I think I um called in a couple of years ago back at your um one of your last episodes with the old radio network about um bagels in in home ovens and having issues with burning everything seasoning. Yeah.
So like, well, you know, Craig says he steams his and that's how he does it. He steams them instead of boiling it. So you're hydrating as you steam it. And there's another way that you can do it without actually steaming your bagels. Uh you just need a um you just need a spray bottle.
Make sure that your bagels are going in real wet when you go into the bake. So after after boil seed. Boil seed, then absolutely gush them down with uh water and let them sit there for a minute. Is that what normal bakers do? I don't know.
I'm not a normal baker. But uh I know that that if I know that you can boil a bagel, let it sit there, and because your bagel is essentially cooked when it's coming out of the kettle, right? We test it on how long. And you can actually develop a little bit harder crust off of letting it sit there for a solid 10 minutes. So you can use that 10 minutes while it's been seated, spray it down with water, let all your dried ingredients get hydrated, and then give it a bake.
So it's not gonna as long as you've as long as the proof is correct, it's not gonna shrink and get all crackly, dackly, nasty while you're waiting for it. Yeah, maybe look for a 90-second each side on the boil. Make sure that your bagel's all the way cooked through. You know, you might be messing a little bit with uh how moist the inside of your bagel is. But letting it sit's not gonna make a wrinkly outside.
No, no, no, it smooths out in the oven from my experience. I don't know. You you bake more bagels at home. Yeah. Paul?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You bake you bake more bagels at home than I do, so I have no idea. My sister lives in Seattle, by the way.
Although it's one of my absolute favorite uh food cities to uh visit. Well, and while Paul's on the line, because he might have some recommendations, Warren Johnson from Seattle wants to know if there's any bagel recommendations in Chicago in Seattle. No idea, but I do know that there's a uh what's it called? Revel? Is that the name of the uh I don't know, did they make it through the pandemic?
That it was like uh four different parts of the venue. It had uh uh uh Asian Yeah, it was my favorite spot. You don't know who's got the good bagel, who's got the good bagel in Seattle. Yeah, you would know Paul. Who's got the good bagel in Seattle, Paul?
Ooh. Seattle's bagel game has been upped considerably since the pandemic, but um the mainly I have uh I haven't had time to do much more than follow um some recommendations from uh Kenji Lopez Alt, who moved here uh like two years ago, and he's been um he's been eating up the bagel scene. I have I have gotten bagels from um from three places that I can remember off the top of my head. There's uh um Rachel's bagels and burritos, which is surprisingly good for what you think of from the name. But um it wasn't my favorite.
I uh tried one from Schmalsey's delicatessen in um I think the ballard area. Do they actually have schmaltz and do they actually have chicken fat that you can wipe on things or no? If I can't get a bagel with schmaltz on it, I uh I I feel falsely advertised. Yeah. They do both kosher and non-kosher Jewish style ish deli stuff.
It's actually a really great idea. I might take take that away. Schmaltz? Season up some uh some chicken fat, render it off, and then throw it on like whipped butter. Oh, it'd be delicious.
It would be a good idea. What about what about a 50-50? Like like butter schmalt. Well, it's not kosher anymore, but like you know, it's a we're not kosher to begin with. So I I try and never allow myself to be put into any form of needing dietary restrictions.
I wonder uh uh butter cream cheese 5050 is delicious. I wonder. How much air could you get in? This is where we need some. Yeah, right.
Especially if you're all the protein. What's the base gonna be? Is the base gonna be like a butter or is the base gonna be like cream cheese? Because you can whip the hell out of a cream cheese or isn't there a fat stabilizer that that that can like stiffen it up a little bit to make it? I tend not to use them that much, but yes, there are.
And then at 10 I would use butter though. Uh wants to know uh toasted or untoasted. Uh this becomes a preferential thing. So I'm an untoasted person. I think that there's uh you can tell the integrity of it all.
Yeah, because you work so hard on the bagel. Uh yeah, but that being said, uh some bagels need to be toasted. An old bagel, an old bagel. An old bagel needs to I'd say this. You buy us in bulk, you wrap us up, throw us in the freezer, and then uh toast up the bagel.
I slice and then freeze, but it was I slice freeze west. Then toast. Uh so yeah, it depends on the freshness. All right, and Quinn, we got one more question from Patreon on bagels. Go.
Yeah, J. I live with roommates and fridge space is extremely limited. Any suggestions on adapting the baking schedule to avoid having to proof shaped bagel in the fridge while still being able to bake in the morning? Turn up the AC. Uh why not use ice water as your uh as your water.
Chill down the temperature of your uh dough. Make sure that you're in maybe the high 50s uh when you go to uh uh proof it. And what about like real low yeast, like really, really low yeast? Not even low yeast, just make sure you don't activate it. Maybe a low a low amount of activation on it.
So if they're not gonna put it in the fridge at all, I mean. Yeah, maybe, but I mean what's the ambient temperature? 70 degrees? And what are you gonna what are you gonna rise? 50 to 70 degrees, that's gonna take a while.
So uh I don't know. Let's let's try it. Let's try controlling your water followed by uh followed by controlling your yeast. Yeah, and uh get a dorm fridge and uh uh on the way out not a cat says what's better sh spread or spread or schmear Craig Schmeer is the better you you gotta you gotta go schmear all right thanks for coming on cooking issues thanks guys
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.