Honey tamari bagels
I’m in a mood to submit things! I want to send out a million stories and queries and copies of my film or my screenplay, I want to send them to anybody I can think of! Maybe it’s the spring weather, making me feel as though I need to plant a lot of seeds, so that I can sit by and eagerly watch them rise up out of the ground! In my dreams I’ll have a whole garden of bright, unfurling green shoots, and who knows what they’ll become? Who knows? I want to be on tenterhooks every time I check my email or collect the real mail, because
you never know what could happen! Somebody somewhere might like something. It’s not impossible. It happens to people sometimes. Not me, ever, but you never know! And they’ll be all, “well we want to pay you hundreds of dollars for this remarkable two-page story, and set you up with a lucrative contract for writing novels and cookbooks and making films–you’ll have complete artistic freedom, and you’ll really have no financial worries for the rest of your days.” And I’ll be all, “don’t insult me, man. It’s not about the money, it’s about the art, you can keep your contract.” Yeah. I was searching for places to submit things, this morning–you know, any random place accepting any kind of submission, and I came across the online version of a very hip literary magazine. And the funny thing about this online version of a very hip literary magazine was that all of the contributions were hip, ironic little pieces that disparaged ironic hipsters!! I don’t even know what that is. It would be self-loathing, if it involved that much passion, but it obviously didn’t, because it’s very hard to maintain a sarcastic tone if you’re feeling any actual emotion. I felt very curmudgeonly, reading this online literary magazine. I felt cranky about the fact that the word “ironic” is so overused that it no longer has much meaning. I felt cranky because what I was reading wasn’t satire, it could barely muster the energy to be sarcastic, it was just clever and snarky. And I felt a little sad because nothing beautiful can come from such insincerity and soullessness. It’s so easy to be negative and critical and cruel. It’s so easy to elicit a response to mockery and hatred. These are the kind of seeds that grow fast and hardy. They’re bright and colorful and hard to miss. They crowd out the more fragile, less impressively-blossomed plants. They have a funny smell, and they don’t last very long, but there will always be plenty more to take their place.
I said I’d been putting tamari and honey in everything lately, so of course, sooner or later it would be bagels. I thought these were really good. The flavor is very subtle, as I believe flavor should be in a bagel. But it’s a nice mix of savory and sweet. It’s umami, mama.
This is beautiful! It’s Sara and Maybelle Carter singing Sweet Fern.
1 cup warm water
1/2 cup warm milk
1/4 cup honey
1 t yeast
1 egg
2 T tamari (++)
5 cups flour
2 t salt
Combine the 1 cup warm water, the warm milk, honey and yeast in a large bowl, and leave to get foamy – ten or fifteen minutes. Stir in the egg and tamari. Add the flour and salt and stir or mix with your hands until well-combined. Knead for about five minutes till it’s soft and pliant, adding more flour as necessary to make it workable. I like to try to work with it as wet and sticky as possible. Towards the last minute of kneading, sprinkle some tamari into the dough, and work it in, but not completely. Leave to double in bulk 2-5 hours. Punch down. (You can let it rise a second time at this point, if you, say, need to pick your kids up from school, but I don’t think it’s necessary, if you really can’t wait for your bagels!) Break into 8 pieces. Roll each into a ball. Poke a hole in the center, and shape like a bagel! Set on a cookie sheet to proof while you…Preheat the oven to 450 and prepare the…
THE WATER BATH
3 quarts water
1 T sugar
Bring the water to a boil. As soon as it starts to boil turn the heat off, you want the temperature to be just below boiling.
Drop as many bagels as will comfortably fit into the water bath. (I could fit four) They should rise right to the top. Cook twenty seconds, and gently turn over to cook for another twenty seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain in a colander and then set on the ungreased baking sheet, leaving a bit of space because they’ll puff up slightly.
Bake 20 – 25 minutes till they’re golden brown. Lovely toasted with butter!!
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