It's tempting to blame modernity for the abomination that is the bran muffin. Dry as dirt (though nowhere near as tasty) bran muffins have been impossible to get away from since at least the late 70's. There's an artisan bake shop not two blocks from here that sells only one kind of muffin — one kind! — without some whole or alternative grain additive. Blasted hippies!

Unfortunately we can't blame the boomers, at least not completely, for the "health" muffin, since even the very earliest muffins were made from whole wheat, rye and — the miracle food of the age — Graham flour. It seems even a hundred years ago people viewed the morning muffin as a (mostly) painless way to kick start their digestive tracts.

The American-style muffin, as distinct from the English muffin, evolved around the time of the Second Industrial Revolution, which is to say the time when North Americans really got into the industrialization act (the second half of the 19th century). This was the golden age of American baking, when cast iron home stoves — complete with their own small ovens — rolled off American assembly lines. Well they didn't roll off exactly, they had to be carried...by like 18 guys, because those things were heavy. And then I guess now that I think about it the moving assembly line wasn't perfected in America until 1908. Other than that though, the phrase was apt.

Just how and when the American muffin diverged from the English muffin isn't known. However I will posit the following guess: because it was a lot faster and easier to make. The English muffin is made from a risen yeast batter that is "baked", really fried, in a small ring mold on a griddle. The American muffin, as demonstrated below, is made from a batter that is simply mixed together and baked in a mold. Start-to-finish, a collection of raw ingredients can be turned into hot ready-to-eat muffins in as little as 40 minutes. Plus chemical leavening, as long as it's been stored properly, is never-fail. The same cannot be said of either packaged yeast (at least in those days) or a home-made starter.

So then the American-style muffin was clearly convenient, since it allowed a home baker to throw a batch together and bake them up quick (very likely in the residual heat of the wood-fired stove while dinner was being prepared). However it also allowed for improvisation in a way that the English muffin didn't. Just about anything can be added to American muffin batter without interfering with the rising ability of baking powder or soda. That feature has been rather abused, at least to my mind, since American bakers started gettin' jiggy with the ingredients around the 1920's and 30's. Prior to that point additions to American muffins were largely limited to things like raisins, dates and nuts (maybe bits of bacon or ham for a savory twist). Starting around 1940 fresh fruits like berries began to show up, after which point all hell broke loose: chocolate, carrots, cheese, squash. By the 1970's there were muffins sporting things like pineapple and Spam. Today we have everything from peanut butter fudge to spinach, rhubarb, fennel, shellfish, lemon-chive-pepper, bleu cheese and walnuts...you name it.

Just more American baking ingenuity? Or a good idea gone horribly wrong? You be the judge.

The muffin method has many virtues, chief among them that it's very fast and can be done — and is indeed better done — without the use of a machine. It's my belief that machine mixing is the chief cause of the inferior muffins mass producers churn out, and why so many bigger bakeries (when they don't use mixes) employ the creaming method, which results in cupcake-like muffins instead of the real thing. Here we have large bowl A, which contains our dry ingredients, thoroughly sifted and blended so as to evenly distribute the leavening (you can use a whisk or even a food processor if you want to get really obsessive).

Next we have medium bowl B, containing all my miscellaneous wet ingredients, including sugar, whisked together. Why is sugar considered a "wet" ingredient in the baking world? Because it dissolves so quickly in anything watery. Here I should emphasize that all your wet ingredients MUST be at room temperature. All of them. Got that? All. Of. Them. Room temperature. The lot.

Now then, spatula in hand, we apply bowl B to bowl A.

And begin to fold, gently, scraping from the bottom and flipping over the top...lightly. The trick here is to fold only as much as it takes to moisten all the dry ingredients and no more. For this double batch of muffins I folded for about 45 seconds, until there were no more large pockets of flour to be found.

Here you can see there are a few small areas of unmixed flour, right around the edges. This is the time to stop folding:

With the mix more or less blended, now's the time to add any other items to your muffin (or pancake or quick bread) batter, in this case blueberries. Fold them in only to the point they are evenly distributed, no more.

Fill your molds with batter and bake.

That was pretty darn easy, wasn't it? For an indication of how well you've mixed, pay attention to the behavior of your leftover batter as you wash out your bowl. If the muffin or quick bread batter simply dissolves in the faucet stream, you've got a superior product to look forward to. If it puts up a fight or leaves slick, stringy and/or rubbery deposits on your wash cloth or sponge, you'll want to ease up on elbow grease next time, killer.

How did I do on these? A near perfect muffin crumb, irregular holes with a few large ones (indicating a slightly uneven mix of leavening), but no "tunnels" caused by gluten formation. I think I'll put the kettle on.

There are certain cynics out there, most of them European pastry chefs and New York Times food writers, who claim that the blueberry muffin is the only real contribution the New World has made to the global (and when they say that they mean European) baking tradition. The entire idea is preposterous of course, since along with so-so blueberry muffins you can also find plenty of limp chocolate chip cookies and saggy brownies tucked into the ghetto sections of Parisian pastry cases. These of course are only the "greatest hits" of North American baking. The contributions of New World home bakers, being the most creative and prolific the world has ever seen, are legion. Layer cakes, open-topped fruit pies, quick breads and biscuits leap to mind. And then there's just about anything made with corn meal.

So then I suppose the real question is, given all that, why has the blueberry muffin of all things become the emblem of New World (and specifically American) baking? A large part of the answer lies in the fact that blueberry muffins are quick breads, which are very American sorts of devices. By that of course I mean that muffins are leavened with baking soda and/or powder, common ingredients in America due to — and I've written extensively on this before — the abundance of wood in North America. They're also mostly made by home bakers, which is again very New World since most sweet baking on the continent was done, and still is done, by professionals. The last part of the answer, I think, resides in the fact that blueberries are a New World fruit. Enjoyed by American Indians all along the Eastern seaboard for millennia before the settlers ever arrived, they have to this day a certain authentic caché on the continent.

But now that I think about it, the continental baking tradition doesn't really have anything quite like a muffin: a small, single-serving sweet cake that's baked in a mold. The closest analogous thing I can think of is the English muffin, the American muffin's direct ancestor. But more on that next week.

An anonymous email came in late last evening from someone claiming to be a representative of New Metro, manufacturer of the BeaterBlade, a product I expressed skepticism about in the below post, Scrape-O-Matic. I couldn't tell anything about the sender because the email originated from a commercial ISP (Time Warner), apparently from a server in San Diego. It went like so:

You mention in your blog that the scraper misses the bottom, but in fact it does scrape the dimple. There is no flour left in the bowl after using our product. Also, why don’t you ‘dig’ plastic? It’s lightweight, costs less than metal and is extremely strong. What the product offers is success…no matter your skill level…that all the ingredients will be mixed properly. We hope you get to try it one day to see its advantages.

That's good solid PR writing, so my guess is it's genuine (maybe a freelance publicist working from home?). If the scraper does scrape the dimple of the bowl out completely then I certainly stand corrected. To answer the question, the reason I don't trust plastic for a mixer implement is that it simply isn't as strong as metal. It would be more likely to snap off during use if a) the mixer motor was strong and b) the contents of the bowl put up much resistance.

If the BeaterBlade does everything New Metro claims it does than I'm sure it would be excellent for light duty jobs like small batches of cake or tea bread batter. I suppose I'm a born skeptic, but as this fellow/gal insinuated...I should try it before I criticize it.

Yesterday I left off talking about the differences between cakes and muffins. But why talk when I can show? Let's start with a small wedge of cake, cut cross-wise to reveal what's under the hood:

We have a few larger holes here, but notice how small and regular most of the rest of them are. Notice also the yellow color and satiny sheen you get from all those extra eggs. You can tell what this is going to feel like in your mouth just by looking at it, can't you? Very moist and tender and just a little bit crumbly. Now compare that to a muffin:

Here we see a very different thing. Lots of larger holes and a larger average hole size. Add to that a paler color and a crumb that could easily pass for sandwich bread if the brown sugar topping wasn't so obvious around the edges. There's no mistaking that this crumb is flour-heavy, and mixed in such a way that it left uneven pockets of leavening here and there. The good news is that there are no long "tunnels", a telltale sign of overmixing. Though it isn't cake, it's still a very fluffy and tender crumb, I can vouch for that fact myself (*burp*). A very well-mixed muffin.

"Overmixing" is a term that's generally applied to batters versus doughs. It means that the mixture has been agitated to the point that the gluten in the flour has been developed. Most often it's pancake batters and muffin batters (things made via the muffin method) that are said to be overmixed, though cookie and cake batters can be overmixed, so can biscuit doughs, though I always think of that as "over-kneading". Call me a hair-splitter, I won't deny it.

What are the telltale signs of overmixing? For virtually all types of baked goods, know an overmixed product by its tough texture, the result of stretchy, developed gluten. Where muffins are concerned, overly large and/or long holes, or "tunnels", are one of the telltale signs. The reason, because developed gluten networks trap and hold expanding steam. Where there is little developed gluten, much of the steam produced by a baking muffin escapes out the top and sides. In an overmixed muffin the steam has a much harder time escaping, and so forms bubbles. This, as you might expect, increases the volume of the muffin, which is why a small slightly domed, even flattish muffin is always to be preferred over one with a prominent, conical peak. For the visual thrill of such a dramatic rise is invariably paid for by a rubbery interior.

The Dictionary of American Regional English defines a muffin this way: "A small cake; a cupcake." And indeed most people, if asked on the street what a muffin most closely resembles, would probably say the same thing. Certainly there are a lot of cakey muffins out there (especially these days), but how accurate is that? Let's take the base components of this blueberry muffin recipe:

15 ounces flour
5 ounces butter
7 ounces sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups yogurt

...and compare them to the base components of Rose Levy Berenbaum's basic yellow butter cake (I've doubled the quantity for the purposes of comparison):

14 ounces flour
12 ounces butter
14 ounces sugar
8 eggs
1 1/3 cups sour cream

The flour weight is just about the same, but relative to that we can see that there's a whole lot of just about everything else: double or more of the butter and sugar, and quadruple the eggs.

What does it mean? Firstly, it means that a cake is a much more delicate, sweet and tender affair than a muffin. Relative to everything that a cake batter has to lift (lots of butter and sugar) it has very little flour. Cake makers compensate for the scarcity of wheat-based building material by employing a unique mixing method (the creaming method) that seeks to develop at least some of the gluten in the cake flour, then use eggs to make up the rest of the structure.

Muffins don't need all those eggs since there's plenty of flour in the mix (literally). The danger there, however, is that because of all that flour, gluten can develop and make the muffin tough. The solution to that problem, for muffin makers, is to employ a mixing method that agitates the ingredients as little as humanly possible: the muffin method. A well mixed muffin is one that's agitated only to the point that the ingredients are fully moistened. Even distribution of fat and leavening is somewhat beside the point, which is why muffins have a much more irregular crumb than a slice of cake. But more on that tomorrow.

While I'm on the subject of requests, I've had six or eight of them over as many months for muffins. Since muffins are just about my all-time favorite breakfast food, I think it's high time I blogged about them. The timing is good too, since blueberries are out here in Kentucky (or at least they are at the orchards across the river in Indiana), might as well make the first batch the all-American favorite.

HELLACIOUS traffic the last two days, much of it from Stumbleupon.com. I'd love to know where/how I've been referenced, but every time I try to track the referrals back, all I get is an advertisement. Would any of you Stumbleuponers be so kind as to enlighten me as to what or whom I owe this largesse?

This is a standard, easy, workingman's ganache, great for baking applications. Ganache (pronounced ga-NAHsh) is most commonly a 50-50 combination of chocolate and heavy cream (by weight). Known as "soft" ganache, this is the kind that is typically used for toppings and drizzles, or whipped to make cake fillings. Heavier "firm" ganaches (say, 2-1 chocolate to cream) are more commonly used in candy and/or truffle making.

Here I should emphasize that when it comes to melting chocolate, I'm a microwave man. I find it much simpler, quicker and less risky than a double boiler or sauce pan. Where a typical ganache recipe will instruct you to "scald" your cream in a pan before you use it, that step is actually an anachronism, originally employed to kill bacteria, but no longer needed in the age of ultra-pasteurized dairy. The microwave is gentle, fast and to my way of seeing things, foolproof.

So then, start by putting your chocolate, however much you plan to use, in a microwave-proof bowl.

Pour in an equal amount of cream...

And insert in the microwave. Here I must emphasize that a microwave must be used judiciously where chocolate is concerned. Several short bursts on "high" are what's required, as opposed to one or two long ones. I start with a 30-second zap, stir, and then use as many 20-second blasts as I need after that (generally about 4 for this much ganache).

Three zaps and you can see there's a little melting going on.

For shots and — oh no! My chocolate, it's seized! Actually yes. "Seizing" is what happens when cocoa solids get wet. They swell up and stick together, creating clumps. But the thing about seizing is, it's no big deal*, especially in this case, since ganache is a relatively watery mixture (as a result of the cream). As that water continues to mix with the sugar in the chocolate it will form a smooth syrup that will eventually re-lubricate the cocoa solids and create a smooth sauce.

One more burst of microwaves and you can see that things are once again going my way. There are still quite a few unmelted chocolate chips, but by now I've built up enough heat that stirring will take me the rest of the way.

Another 45 seconds and we have touchdown. The ganache emulsion-with-a-suspension has been achieved.

This ganache is ready to use as, say, an éclair topping. If you were planning to use it for a truffle or some other longer-lasting application, like maybe to cover a cake, you'd want to add a tablespoon of corn syrup to inhibit runaway crystallization of the cocoa butter (that white film that melted and re-hardened chocolate often gets).

Some crystallization, however, is important for a ganache, which is why a warm ganache should always be allowed to sit at room temperature for at least a few hours before being refrigerated. That gives the fat in the ganache time to form a limited crystal structure, without which the ganache will become limp and greasy.

Lastly, I should insert that ganaches can be flavored. Some people simply add a little vanilla (or other extract) to the finished product to add complexity. Some people add a little booze or shot of liqueur. Me, I frequently like to get jiggy widdit by infusing the cream with various types of tea or herbs like lavender or lemon verbena. This of course requires a saucepan since you'll want to add your whatever-it-is to your cream and simmer it until you have as much flavor infused into the cream as you wish. When that point is reached you simply strain out your leaves and carry on as usual.

* Should your chocolate seize on you when you're melting it for a non-ganache application, don't panic. Simply keep adding warm water, a few drops at a time, until the chocolate smoothes back out again.

Lost of interesting stuff in the news lately, some of it even sane. On the one hand we have some point-counterpoint from the Los Angeles Times on the subject of local foods. Though it's not really point-counterpoint since both authors claim to be big local foods supporters, one argues that locally-produced foods offer no concrete health benefits while the other argues they offer no concrete environmental benefits. If both of these guys are "pro" local foods, I wonder what the "con" side of the argument looks like?

Next there's this article from Newsday pointing out that corn ethanol has adversely impacted the global food supply. Nice that they've noticed a correlation, though the writer goes on to parrot every trope about "industrialized agriculture" currently in existence. His proposed solution to the global food crisis: more local and organic farming. Perhaps he and the two folks from the Times piece should get together and compare notes.

Lastly this piece, again from the Los Angeles Times, talking about the return of high-carbohydrate foods. How on Earth can they be back? Well it seems carbohydrate-rich foods offer heretofore undiscovered health benefits. Which is good, though I certainly hope they've taken out whatever it was that was killing me last year.

Ah, ze éclair...si simple, si marveilleuse. I feel like eating one right now. Oh, right, I just did. But with all my prepared shells, pastry cream and ganache on-hand, there's plenty more where that came from, n'est-ce pas? So what am I waiting for? I start by filling a pastry bag with stirred-up pastry cream and fitting it with a bismarck tip like so:

Grasping the closest available pastry shell, I gently insert the tip with a slight twisting motion (if possible right into one of the cracks in the shell, an easy entry point). Then: squeeze.

How do I know when the éclair is full? Here's a clue:

All there is left to do now is dip the top in either melted chocolate or chocolate ganache, whichever you prefer (straight chocolate tends to chip once it's cooled, so if I have the cream on hand I'll usually use ganache).

Remove to plate...

...and eat! Or if you prefer you can let the topping firm up...though I can't recall ever having had an éclair survive in my presence long enough. Simply put the pastry in the fridge for ten or fifteen minutes.

Here I should stress that éclairs are best eaten as soon as they're filled and topped. The moment the pastry cream goes into the shell, the moisture begins to soften the pastry. The effect is not immediate, but is noticeable if the éclair is allowed to sit for more than a few hours. The shell gets soggy, which isn't the end of the world, but part of the enjoyment of an éclair is the texture contrast. All goo is still OK, but...you get the picture.

Also, if you're parking éclairs, always do so in the refrigerator. Pastry cream is a dairy product made with egg yolks, and should be treated with as much deference as you would show to a bowl of raw eggs (just in case). But again, when has an éclair ever lasted that long?

If you don't have a bismarck tip you can certainly take the alternate route, slicing the shell in half (or thereabouts) lengthwise and piping the cream in. This is certainly a serviceable method, especially nice if you have decent piping skills (I don't). The down side is that the pastry cream tends to squirt out when you bite down on it, which isn't a problem per se, especially if you like licking your fingers.

I should also point out that some pastry makers like to flip the shells over and use the nice flat bottom as the top. The approach is not without a certain appeal.

When it comes to excellence in ice cream, there is no more discerning palate than the inimitable David Lebovitz. Clearly why MSNBC tapped him to take them on a tour of America's premier ice cream makers (I was in line for the gig but unfortunately had a scheduling conflict). All I can say is thank goodness Graeter's rated, otherwise we'd have had riots down here.

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of legendary blues man Howlin' Wolf, one of the great exponents (along with Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson) of the electrified Chicago blues sound. One of the most commercially and financially successful blues musicians of his day, Howlin' Wolf was a giant of the 50's blues scene, both artistically and physically (the man measured six foot six and weighed in at over 300 pounds). His sheer size combined with his aggressive rhythmic style (and volume) earned him a reputation as one of the most intimidating acts ever to take a stage.

Yet for all that, "Big Foot Chester", as he was also called (his real name was Chester Burnett), was renown as a generous and moderate soul. Unlike virtually all of the well-known (and less well-known) players of that era, Howlin' Wolf managed to avoid the pitfalls of alcohol, drugs, women and gambling. He even had a stable home life, with a wife and two daughters he adored to his dying day in 1976. No doubt it was this core discipline that made him such an effective business man and money manager. He had the best paid and organized band in Chicago. He even offered his musicians health insurance (!).

In the last few decades he's mostly been known as the fellow that 50's deejay Wolf Man Jack modeled his voice after. However his recorded music remains as potent as ever. His best known track, Moanin' at Midnight, has as much drive as anything later funk masters like James Brown or George Clinton ever achieved, but with less than half as many players and a fraction of the wattage. Check it out here. And don't deny yourself to the opportunity to see him singing one of his biggest hits, Smoke Stack Lightning, here.

So then, after mixing the choux is ready to go. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Spoon the choux into the pastry bag of your choice, fitting it was a collar but no tip (so as to maximize choux outflow). Pipe it into the shape of your choice. Here I'm making short, stubby éclairs, which I prefer over the foot-longs you sometimes see. You can pipe onto a silpat or parchment paper, whichever you have around (if you're using parchment make sure to stick the paper down to the sheet pan by planting a small dab of batter under each corner).

I do a wavy, zig-zaggy pattern which isn't the way Jacques Pépin would have me do it, but he wasn't here to help, so...

Make sure when you're piping that you pile the choux up some as opposed to just spreading it out. I sort of angle my bag at a steep angle so my little puddles have some height to them. This ensures that the finished product is nice and tall instead of simply wide. Next give them a spritz with water (the extra steam helps the rise).

Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 375 and bake for 10-15 minutes more, until golden.

But we're not done yet. They need to dry out, and the best way to get that process started is by releasing the steam that's trapped inside. Do that by poking slits in the bottom of the shells with a good sharp knife.

Leaving them upside-down, the final step is to put them back in the turned-off oven for several hours. Since the oven will still be quite hot at this point, you'll need to prop the oven door open with something for the first ten minutes or so to release the heat. Say, a wooden spoon. When the ten minutes have elapsed, remove the spoon and close the oven door, leaving them for two hours or even overnight if you wish.

If the Japanese can send us Beard Papa and the Koreans PinkBerry, it's only fair that we send something back, doncha think?

Did I remember to say it's pronounced like "shoe"?

No matter. Making choux is a simple process, mostly just stirring. The traditional method is to simply use a wooden spoon, though a lot of people use food processors nowadays. Me, I can't tell much of a difference between the methods, so I figure, why dirty a food processor? The things are a pain to clean.

Start by bringing your water, butter, salt and sugar to a boil. Try not to keep this up for too long, since moisture is important to the consistency of the dough/batter.

Once you've got your mixture boiling, add you flour. Here you can see I sifted mine since sifted flour is less likely to clump.

Take the pan off the heat and stir the mixture into a paste.

Now comes the very important cooking stage, where you gelatinize the starch. You want to return the mixture to medium heat and cook it until it a.) becomes semi-smooth and blobby, and b.) a thin film of cooked flour starts to stick to the pan. Once you see that happening, start the three-minute clock and continue the stirring.

When the three minutes are up it's time to turn the choux out into a bowl and start adding your eggs. Just add one...

...stir until it's incorporated...

...add another...

...stir and so on until you've added all your eggs and the mixture is completely smooth and mostly cooled down.

There, that was easy. Where's my pastry bag?

Here is a basic formula for choux:

½ cup butter
1 cup water
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs

Also in the New York Times food section today an item about a beater (a.k.a. "paddle") attachment that does your bowl scraping for you: the BeaterBlade. This new piece of gadgetry from New Metro Design is evidently meant to compete with the SideSwipe Spatula Mixer Blade that came out earlier this year. Both promise to end the drudgery of scraping down the sides your bowl as you mix. Though I can't say I've used either, I haven't exactly been swept off my feet by the demo videos, since both paddles seem to miss the spot where most unmixed flour hangs out: the very bottom of the bowl. Getting to that spot is where the lion's share of the work is in scraping. If I'm going to have to do that bit myself anyway, I can't say I see a whole lot of value in these things. Also, they're made of plastic instead of metal, which I definitely don't dig.

It seems the initial fears over the purchase of the White Lily flour company by the J.M. Smucker company were justified. By the end of the month the historic White Lily Mill in Knoxville, Tennessee will shut its doors for good. It seems insane that in a day where the food world is on fire for unique, locally produced foods and ingredients, Smucker would do such a thing. I suppose the fact that soft red winter wheat isn't much produced in the South anymore has a lot to do with it. The new northern White Lily mills will now be closer to their base of supply. However the thing that you can't ever replace is the je ne sais quois of a 125-year-old milling process, regardless of how expensive and precise the new machinery might be. The company of course says that they'll be producing the same great product that White Lily has always been known for. What's the verdict of the experts? It ain't good. I fear my biscuits will never be the same again.

It's really very hard to know with these things, though it seems likely that choux pastry dates back to the High Middle Ages, probably to the courts of Renaissance Italy. The first written record of it dates to 1540 when it was employed by fellow by the name of Panterelli, himself a chef to the court of Catherine de Medici. Panterelli claimed it as his own invention, though claiming ownership of a technique that was already in common (or at least fairly common) use was, well...common. What's known for sure is that he did manage to stamp his name on it (Pâte à Panterelli), at least for a while, until it was renamed Pâte à Popelin, evidently after a type of small cake (one supposedly shaped like a breast...which makes me wonder, between that and the "nun fart" thing, if there was any humor in the Middle Ages that wasn't crass). By the 1700's a French pastry maker by the name of Avice used it to make what he called "cabbage buns", and the name has been pretty much set ever since (though I'm personally thinking of starting a campaign to rename it Pâte à Joe...hey, why not?). There are those in the culinary world who still like to ascribe the invention of choux to the legendary chef Antonin Carême, though he wasn't born until 1784, so who are we kidding?

Thinking about it last night, what unbaked choux paste reminds me of the most, at lest in terms of its behavior, is a groovy bubble-blowing goo from the 70's called Super Elastic Bubble Plastic (made by Wham-O!). It too starts as blob of putty-like material, but due to its extreme plasticity (and elasticity), it can be blown up into huge bubbles. I wish that stuff was still around. Sadly it was taken off the market in the early 80's since the scolds of the world said it gave off noxious fumes. Like those ever hurt anybody.

In yesterday's laundry list of things made with pâte à choux I neglected to include pâte à choux beignets, which are essentially deep fried spoonfuls of choux paste. Dropped into hot oil or fat, they blow up into incredibly light, practically transparent, puffs which are then sprinkled with powdered sugar and eaten. These delicate little confections are known as pets de nonne, a.k.a. "nun farts" and have been enjoyed in France — yes, under that name — for centuries.

It's the "double cooking" of pâte à choux that is the genius behind this batter/dough. If you've ever made éclair or cream puff shells before, you may recall the process. Water and fat are combined in a sauce pan and heated to the boil, at which point enough flour is added to turn the mixture into a fairly stiff paste. That paste is then cooked over low heat until it forms a kind of dough ball, which is then finish by beating in several eggs, one after the other. Interesting. Curious. But what does it all mean?

What choux is is a very high gluten paste, and that's unusual. Usually batters, regardless of how thick they are, are low-gluten types of affairs. Recall how one is time and again instructed not to stir a pancake batter for fear of activating gluten and creating "tough" cakes. The same goes for muffins, since too much agitation causes big stretchy bubbles that make "tunnels" in the finished product, ruining the delicate crumb. Here the baker goes out of his (sorry ladies) way to activate the gluten in the choux, in an attempt to turn the entire thing into one giant bubble. This is the reason for the vigorous beating-in of the eggs after the dough is cooked.

Cool yes? But then what does the cooking portion of the process do? In fact some other very interesting things that you don't typically see in a batter. For one it heats the moistened flour granules, which causes the individual starch molecules (long, straw-like structures) to become unbundled, or gelate. This has the effect of creating a starch mesh (gel) to complement and reinforce the gluten mesh in the beaten choux. When baked, these dual networks help the bubble of expanding dough stretch and at the same time prevent steam from escaping. The cooking of the choux also partially denatures (i.e. "messes up") the gluten in the paste so that it loses its elasticity, thus ensuring that when the single bubble is fully expanded it doesn't snap back before the structure hardens.

Amazing, n'est pas?

People call it choux for short. The word literally means cabbage in French, and if you're wondering how a pastry dough (batter, really) made of eggs, butter and flour ever got that name, reflect for a moment on the knobbly top of a cream puff and you'll get it.

Choux dough (batter, really) is, along with the popover, among the greatest exemplars of mechanical leavening known to the bakery and pastry world. Should you be rusty on what exactly "mechanical leavening" means, it's shorthand for raising bread and/or pastry via steam power. Laminated doughs like puff pastry use it, soufflés and angel food cakes use it. Yet none of them achieve the impressive volumes of choux, a walnut-sized dollop of which will inflate to roughly the size of a lemon in the oven — and almost perfectly hollow to boot.

What's the magic behind it? Steam occupies something on the order of 1600 times the space of the water it came from. When you consider that most doughs and batters are quite wet, that's a lot of leavening potential there. Even in a device as fiendishly clever as choux, most of that leavening potential escapes (otherwise you'd have a éclair as big as a living room couch, which, you know, really wouldn't be such a bad thing), but if you're clever about it, you can retain just enough to push up whatever it is you happen to be baking. In point of fact everything baked employes mechanical leavening to some extent. Yeast and chemicals at best create "starter" bubbles which are later expanded by steam in then oven.

Why am I telling you all of this? Honestly, because I can't stop (it's why I have a blog, so my friends and family don't kill me). However I find it fascinating that choux can do what it does: start as a wet batter about the consistency of library paste and expand into a crackly golden glory some 12 times its original size, hollow and just begging to be filled up with some sort of pastry cream or ice cream.

How difficult is it to make? Not very, though it does involve multiple steps of mixing, cooking, beating and baking. The good news, however, is that you can make a big batch at one go, then freeze the finished shells in bags for months. I typically make a big batch of both round (cream puff) and elongated (éclair) shells, so I'm prepared no matter what mad craving takes hold of me.

The word éclair means literally "lightning" in French. How and why this particular word came to denote an elongated single-serving pastry filled with custard nobody knows — and I mean nobody. Browsing through the typical food history reference, you get the impression they're all eager for you to just move on to the next entry.

Éclair, n: a word from the French that means lightning bolt. Now then, want a really interesting topic? Edamame. Boy could I ever tell you some stories...

One of the least satisfying explanations of where the éclair gets its name can be found in An A-Z of Food and Drink which claims the term "lightning bolt" was inspired by the reflection of light off the éclair's shiny chocolate coat. Seems the editor of that book, one Mr. John Ayto, just wanted to go home early that day.

Actually, while it is by no means a food reference guide, the best explanation of the "lightning bolt" name that I know comes from the Chambers Dictionary. Obscure to most of us but a virtual bible for practitioners of the crossword puzzle and Scrabble arts, it's known for including the odd bit of trivia and/or tongue-in-cheek definition within its pages. It calls an éclair a "cake" that is "long in shape but short in duration". Works for me.

Since my "How-To" menu over on the right seemed a little rambling and incoherent, I decided to organize it into sub-categories like "Bread", "Pastry", "Components" and such. Now instead of looking confusing it simply looks pathetic (with about five entries under each heading). Just means I've got a lot more blogging to do, eh? This will also pave the way for a very slick site redesign I've got planned for the fall...of 2012, which is probably how long it'll take for me to get my act together.

I've owed a good friend a batch of éclairs for quite a while now, and darnit, it's time I delivered. I've also had a few requests of late for instructions on how to make pâte à choux, which is of course the light and puffy dough that éclairs are made from (to say nothing of cream puffs, profiteroles, paris brest, Gâteau St. Honoré, French-style gnocchi, cheesy gougères and of course 70's-era appetizers of all types).

Hm...I'm suddenly hungry for some reason. Anyway éclairs are made from three main components: choux pastry shells, pastry cream and a melted chocolate or chocolate ganache topping. My preferred pastry cream is in the how-to's menu to the right. A nice choux recipe can be found here. As for the ganache, we'll get to that.

How's that for a mixed image? But it's true, I really think I'm getting the hang of this brick oven now, so much so that I'm confident enough to put up a post, How to Fire a Brick Oven over on the menu on the right. It's rewritten/expanded version of one of the posts I put up last week, and will almost certainly be adjusted in the future. For now though, it's my process and I'm stickin' to it.

Did a test burn with some of this bright yellow osage orange (hedge apple) wood on Wednesday. The results were spectacular. Granted it took a good deal longer than I'd hoped (7 hours from start to finish...it's very dense stuff) but you can't argue with the numbers: 900-degree oven walls and floor and a 1000+ -degree ceiling. Adjusting for the fact the the air within the oven will be about 100 degrees cooler than than surfaces, that's more than enough heat for bread and just about perfect for pizza. In fact I re-fired the oven last night for pizza-making (family in town donchaknow) and the pies came out crispy, lightly charred, and with the cheese melted on top but not browned...virtually the Neapolitan ideal. What a difference the big heat makes!

So I am pumped, ladies and germs. Now all I need to do is find a source of osage orange wood that'll last me the rest of my life.

Here's something you don't see every day, a newspaper article on how good life is: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121331500809069989.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries. Now back to the floods, war and famine...

One of the fun things about being an obsessive-compulsive baking and pastry blogger is that you get to pour over a lot of information on a relatively narrow range of subjects. I mean let's face it, when you churn out as many words as I do Monday through Friday, it takes a lot of research...sifting through books, magazine articles, online sources and old interview notes looking for interesting new tidbits of information. The advantage to all that, of pursuing a single subject — or small set of subjects — over several years and across all sorts of media, is that you begin to see patterns in the information. Sort of like the psychotic personality in the movie A Beautiful Mind, you start seeing things that might not be readily apparent to the casual observer.

One pattern that emerged early on in the history of joepastry.com was the tendency of food historians to habitually ascribe the origin of various breads to the Battle of Vienna in 1683, sort of as an interesting little piece of trivia. Though most people today aren't familiar with it, the Battle of Vienna was possibly the critical battle in modern European history — the point at which the Ottoman Turks, who at the time seemed poised to overrun all of Europe and extinguish once and for all Christian rule, the nation state system and emerging concepts of individual rights and democracy, were routed by a combined army of Habsburgs and Poles. As I said we don't think much about the battle now, but at the time it was considered, you know, important.

Where does bread come into it? Well, that's the puzzle. My own guess is that since bakery has been a highly refined art form in Vienna for hundreds of years — much longer than in places like Paris or London — people look for specific events in Vienna's history to tie the origin of certain foods to (oop — dangling participle). The Battle of Vienna, being so momentous, is merely the easiest of these. Thus there are stories linking the Battle of Vienna to the invention of the croissant, the brioche, the baguette, and of course the bagel, supposedly made to resemble King John Sobieski's stirrup (imagine the twisted mind of a baker who'd actually think that was a compliment...King John would have kept well away from that guy). It's why I have come to call the Battle of Vienna the most baking-intensive conflict in the history of man.

Folks who've followed the site for a while already know the story: It was a gloomy night in Vienna. For two long months the Ottoman Turks under Pasha Kara Mustafa had been laying siege to the city. Supplies were dwindling, morale was low, the aura of doom was palpable. Down to the last of their precious flour stores, a group of bakers worked methodically onward in their shop that abutted the city wall. It was the wee small hours of the morning when suddenly: tap, tap, tap...tap, tap, tap. The bakers looked up at one another. What on Earth could that be? And then suddenly they realized: the Ottomans! They're tunneling into the city! Quick! Raise the alarm! No — wait! Let's bake something! Something edible we can spread around the city hours from now to let people know that imminent doom is approaching!

Well OK, so they don't always bake first (except in the croissant version). Some iterations have them running out and sounding the alarm. In others they pick up whatever implements are at hand and take on the Turks themselves, presumably impaling the bad guys on whisks and icing spatulas. But the story always ends with the Turks defeated, the populace grateful, and the bakers given sole rights to baking and selling the whatever-they-came-up-with by royal decree.

I gotta admit, it's a fun story. Personally I like the image of swarthy, bare-chested Austrians toiling away in their shop, just waiting for an excuse to go kick some Ottoman can. It offers me the happy illusion that instead of being fussy foodie primadonnas we pastry types are actually widow-makers in waiting. That inside every Jacques Torres there's a Chuck Norris waiting to get out. Yeah, well, a guy can dream.

Like just about every other phony food history story, these tall tales have interchangeable parts. They can take place either in 1683 during the Battle of Vienna, or in 1529 during the Siege of Vienna. Both pitted Europeans against Turks, though in the Siege of 1529 there was a lot more tunneling (the battle is also called the Siege of the Moles. Alternately, it can happen during the Battle of Buda(pest) in 1686, though in that fracas it was the Europeans who were besieging the Turks. Well heck, Turks like bagels too don't they? Don't they?

Well if you scroll down and compare these shots to the ones in the post Intro to the Cement Doughnut you'll see that I didn't do half bad. True, where the crust is concerned, I don't have the nice smooth skin and near perfect ring-shape of the Manhattan original, but I do have deeper caramelization and a much crunchier texture, which is good. Concerning the crumb...

...it's almost exactly the same, save for the fact that my crumb is a little darker on the inside. That's due to the addition of malt syrup, which I think gives my bagels a rustic-feeling crumb that's a good match for the crust. But holes-wise, I did pretty well. Personally I'd like an even tighter crumb, maybe next time I'll cut my rising times and/or de-gas the dough a little more, to try to create that serious, old-world chew.

I've talked about the why's of bagel boiling, but didn't address all the additives that can, and often do, go into the boiling pot. Everything from sugar to malt syrup to baking soda to lye are used as additives, all of which have the effect of creating a darker, crispier crust. Why darker? Because sugars that are deposited on the outside of a bagel as it boils caramelize in the oven, turning the crust nut-brown (the moisture also helps in this regard, since it encourages the action of enzymes). Alkalines like baking soda or lye have the effect of making the crust both brown and crispy, in the first case because they help break starches down to sugars, and in the second because they react with oven CO2 to create a rigid, edible carbonate, the same thing that gives pretzels their crunch.

Me, I add both sugar (about a quarter cup) and baking soda (about a teaspoon) to my boiler, and am quite happy with the results.

Got a question last evening from a reader by the name of Dan, who asked:

If high gluten flour is what helps give breads bigger holes, why do you use high gluten in bagels where the ideal is smaller holes?

That's an excellent question, for in truth the idea of making bagels with high-gluten flour seems somewhat contradictory. Remember how I said that gluten performs two basic functions in bread. First, it creates big holes in the crumb and second, it makes it chewy. But what if you wanted to isolate one of those two characteristics? What if you liked your bread chewy but with a very fine crumb? You'd give your dough everything it needed for chewiness (lots of gluten and the intensive kneading to develop it), but then deny it the other critical thing it needs to grow those really, really big bubbles: water. For it's the degree of hydration (water) in a dough that determines whether or not the bubbles created by the reproducing yeast, the bubbles that all that gluten traps, can easily combine with one another into big, cavernous spaces. Good bagel dough is so stiff it'll practically burn out your KitchenAid if you aren't careful, and that's a texture that makes it very difficult for bubbles to merge.

So then you say, just for argument's sake, what if you were the opposite type of person? The kind who liked bread with big holes but that wasn't at all chewy? You'd be pretty much SOL, pal. And what kind of weirdo are you anyway?

I don't think I've ever made a bagel that's a flawless torus, but nobody's perfect. They're crunchy, chewy, deep brown and taste great with cream cheese, which is all you need to get into bagel-maker heaven when you die.

As I've mentioned previously, there are a lot of bagel dough recipes out there, and when you start to compare the really good ones, you begin to see that there's not a whole lot of difference between them. The main difference is usually the amount of water in the dough (hydration), otherwise the thing that really makes one bagel different from another is technique. That said, here's how they're made. Beginning with your dough, you first use a bench scraper or a knife to cut it into pieces...

...weighing about five ounces each.

Next, roll the dough pieces into balls using the same technique for buns and rolls that I demonstrated in my post on that subject.

The balls need not be perfectly smooth, for believe me, they're going to get a whole lot bumpier. If you're wondering what those flecks are in the dough, they're cracked black pepper (I add about a teaspoon to the dough since I like my bagels a little spicy).

Now then, there are two basic techniques for shaping bagels, and they produce very different breads. I'll show you both of them since, well, different strokes for different folks. First, the one I prefer. You start by rolling your dough out into a log. Notice I'm not using any flour, not even a little. The reason for this will be clear in a second. Fortunately good bagel dough is very stiff.

Once you've made about a six-inch log, you wrap it around your knuckles like so, holding the two ends in your palm. (WARNING: Does not work the same as brass knuckles in a street fight).

Then you just give the bagel a couple of quick rolls to seal it. Here you can see why I'm not using flour on my board, since if the two ends of the bagel were coated with a dusting of flour, they wouldn't join.

This method is a bit more involved that the other method I'm about to demonstrate, but it produces a flatter and denser bagel for the simple reason that the pressure of rolling breaks more gas bubbles.

Method II begins by poking a hole in the center of the dough ball with your finger...

...then stretching the dough ring out with both hands (some people twirl it on the end of their finger...whatever floats your boat). This method has the advantage of being easier if your dough is on the sticky side, though the bagels tend to puff up to a more roll-like shape since more gas bubbles are left intact.

Now then, while all this rolling has been going on you've had a pot of sugary water on the boil, yes?

Gently drop your bagels in a few at a time and boil them for about two minutes on the first side...

...then giving them a flip with your spider, about a minute on the other side. Pretty bumpy, yes? I told you. But don't worry, all those crinkles will bake out.

Transfer the bagels to a wire rack and paint them with an egg white-water glaze (doing it on a rack keeps you from spilling the glaze on the baking sheet, which would stick the bagels down).

Now if you wish you can apply toppings. A few poppy seeds...

...some sesame seeds for the wife.

Me, I like mine plain. Again the advantage to doing this on a rack is that it prevents you from spilling the seeds onto your baking sheet where they'd certainly burn. That wouldn't really hurt anything, but it smells sort of nasty. Now then, all you need to do is transfer your bagels to a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 450 for about twenty minutes until brown. Cool on a wire rack while you head out to get the lox. Eat!

I've had enough of horse racing and linguistics anyway. So what is malt, then? And why do so many bagel and other bread recipes call for it? In fact malt isn't so much a thing as it is a process. "Malting" is a word that means the same thing as "sprouting", or perhaps more precisely, "germinating". It happens when a seed, notably a grain like barley, is exposed to water and a temperature of around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The seed, which is composed of an embryo (the germ) and a food supply (the endosperm) begins to grow. Which is to say the embryo begins to send out a shoot, at which point various enzymes in the seed switch on and begin slicing the long-chain starch molecules in the endosperm down into simple sugars the embryo needs to fuel its growth. Typically these enzymes produce sugars faster than the shoot can consume them, giving us humans a big opportunity.

On the one hand, one may simply dry malted barley (stopping the malting process but without deactivating the enzymes) and then grind it into powder. The result is so-called diastatic malt powder, a grain-sugar mixture that still has active enzymes in it, enzymes which are capable of breaking down starch when they're mixed with water (the word "diastatic" comes from the Greek diistanai, which means "to separate"). Diastatic malt is useful for baking types since it boosts the sugar content of bread (both by itself and as a result of the action of enzymes), enhancing taste and darkening crust (which occurs as a result of caramelization). Almost impossible to find in stores, diastatic malt usually has to be custom-ordered.

If one were to dry the malted barley and then toast it (which destroys the active enzymes but creates a nice yummy flavor), the result is non-diastatic malt powder. This is the stuff that's usually combined with sugar and dry milk to make malted milk powder. People add it to chocolate shakes to make "malteds", mix it with cocoa powder and sugar and form it into balls, or simply add it to hot water and/or milk and drink it.

If one were to dry the malted barley, then toast it, then mash it to goo and cook it, the result would be malt syrup (at least after it was filtered). Malt syrup is a sticky molasses-like liquid that you can find in health food stores under the name "barley malt". Healthy food types use it as a "natural" sweetener, though there's really nothing any more "natural" about malt syrup as compared more conventional syrups, it's just composed of different kinds of naturally occurring sugars (mostly maltose and glucose). It's about half as sweet tasting as sugar, though it has every bit as many calories.

Bakers use malt syrup for the same reasons they employ diastatic malt, to enhance flavor and color, but of course without adding active enzymes to their dough, which depending on the recipe, might not be either welcome or necessary.

Don't know how many of you tuned in for the Belmont Stakes yesterday, but the big story there was that Big Brown not only lost the Belmont Stakes, his jockey Kent Desormeaux declined to run him anywhere near his capacity for the last quarter mile or so. He simply eased him out of contention in the home stretch. What happened? Nobody knows. Big Brown was by all measures as healthy as the day he won the Derby here in Louisville. However three big races in five weeks is a demanding schedule for even the strongest horse. It was also quite hot, the dirt on the track was deep, and of course the Belmont Stakes is the longest of the Triple Crown races at a mile and a half. Any or all of them could have been a factor. Maybe it was simply that, as my 4-year-old has become fond of saying these last two weeks, he didn't "feel like it".

Congratulations to Da' Tara and jockey Alan Garcia, who won a stunning 38-1 upset.

Seems the blog drew all sorts of expertise over the weekend, including this comment from a Brazilian linguist by the name of Angela (who also happens to be a bagel enthusiast):

I've just read your post on the (possible) origins of the word 'bagel'. Just so it happens I baked bagels today (no malt syrup or malt powder though. These are hard to find in Brazil) and, believe it or not, I am a linguist! So I thought I'd write to tell you something about why or how things get their names.

When a new item is introduced into a culture, it obviously needs to be named in this culture's language. Sometimes the item is translated into something more familiar; in Portugal, for example, the spring roll is called "crêpe chinês". Even though crêpes are not deep-fried, and definitely not rolled up like spring rolls, it's the closest concept that the Portuguese have of the original thing.

In some other cultures, the tendency is to add the original word to the vocabulary, just pronouncing it differently. That's what usually happens in English: spaghetti means spaghetti, banana means banana and caviar means caviar.

Then there's the bagel. Now, I'm no food historian, but as a linguist I do have a hunch. Sometimes, a word can be changed due to what we call "folk etymology". That's when someone makes a wrong analogy about the origin of a word, but then it becomes popular and well-accepted as the right etymology. (here's a link to a better explanation + examples on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_etymology)

So I'm guessing that the bagel had another name when it "came to America", but then, some time later, someone made the connection between its shape and the yiddish word. Specially in New York, the yiddish community must have been really big at that time, so that could easily explain the facts. Then some folks thought they'd vindicate the position of "the creators of bagel", coming up with different explanations and origins -- thus all the fighting.

The point is: just because the yiddish word is "more similar" to the thing itself and to its current name, doesn't mean that the bagel was a jewish creation. So we're back where we started. As a linguist I can't really tell you the origins of bagel, I can only tell what's the probable origin of the word in English. How about that? :D

Those of you who've been reading me long enough to remember my posts on southern biscuits know that I've always felt a little defensive on that topic. I have, after all, spent almost all of my life up north. Who am I to move south and start telling people what to do? Happily over the weekend a reader by the name of Sue — from Texas no less — checked in to give my technique her stamp of approval, as well as offer an excellent tip.

I am enjoying your blog immensely! I am from Texas and was curious about your method for biscuits...you have it down perfectly. The last thing I do before they go into the oven (and no self-respecting true southern biscuit baker would leave this out...) melt 1-2 tablespoons of (salted) butter (fresher, the better) in your pan (in the oven, of course) while you finish cutting out your biscuits. As soon as the butter has melted and warmed--not hot--take your pan out of the oven, set each biscuit in the melted butter, then turn over and put it in its appointed place. The butter creates a nice, golden and crispy crust on both sides....YUMMMM! Uumm...I have to go make biscuits now...

Thanks Sue! I'll add this tip to the permanent link on biscuits over on the right.

For that matter, what's gluten? The next time you make a batch of bread or pizza dough, pinch off a little bit and work it between your fingers under the kitchen faucet for a minute. A good proportion of the dough, mostly water-soluble starch, will wash away. Yet a small rubbery ball will remain. That's it. The non-water-soluble, protein portion of flour: gluten.

Of course if you tried the same thing with just a pile of flour or a simple water-flour paste the whole thing would wash away. That's because gluten must be both watered and worked in order for it to organize itself into a mass.

What we call gluten is actually a combination of two different proteins: glutenin and gliadin. Both are extremely long-chain proteins, but with different properties. Glutenin molecules are rather fluid, and are capable of forming very strong bonds with one another. When they're worked they do just that, bonding both end-to-end and side-to-side into a kind of mesh or network. Gliadin molecules by comparison are tightly wound and bond weakly to one another and to glutenin molecules.

The elastic mesh that these molecules form is what allows dough to rise. The gluten mesh catches and holds carbon dioxide bubbles made by yeast, which would otherwise simply evaporate. The gas bubbles thus make small pockets in the dough. As the dough heats in the oven, those pockets begin to expand, partly as a result of heating gas, but mostly as a result of steam. The stretchy gluten mesh expands with the gas and steam until the starch in the dough gelatinizes, fixing the bubbles in place.

Just how big the bubbles get is determined by two things: the protein (gluten) content of the flour and the amount of water in the dough. More gluten provides more elasticity, allowing bubbles to expand, and more water makes a softer dough, allowing those bubbles to more easily combine with one another.

Of course the elasticity of gluten also makes breads chewy. Sometimes this is desirable (bagels and pizza crusts), sometimes it isn't (cakes and biscuits). Thus we have flours with different proportions of protein for different purposes.

So-called high-gluten flour has the highest protein content of any standard wheat flour (only semolina flour has more), and so has very few uses for most home bakers. So few, in fact, that it's not worth the time for most commercial flour makers to package and sell it in grocery stores. You either need to order it, or somehow con your local bakery or pizza parlor out of some.

There's sense in which the ritual of boiling bagels is just that: a ritual. As I mentioned yesterday, the practice of briefly boiling, then baking, small breads goes back millennia. For some, notably a bevy of commercial bagel makers off the East coast, boiling is a self-defeating spring-inhibiting anachronism. Yet true bagel lovers know that a bagel isn't a bagel unless it's been boiled (poached, really, if you want to get technical about it).

Poaching does at least two things that I know of. First, it cooks the outer layer of the dough, gelatinizing the starch and creating a tough skin. That skin will go on to form a slightly crunchy, chewy crust. It will also restrict the rise of the bagel in the oven like a corset on a plump chorus girl, creating a denser crumb with smaller holes.

The other thing poaching does is of course moisten the outside of the bagel, which, like misting the outside of a baguette, gives enzymes in the skin crucial extra minutes to work before the heat of the oven deactivates them. What are those enzymes doing? Why, breaking starch down into sugars — sugars which eventually caramelize, giving the bagel a nice brown crust. Big chain bagel makers mist their bagels in this way, and the result, at least from a browning standpoint, is comparable to poached bagels. Yet without that restricitive skin they end up light and round like rolls instead of flattish and dense like true bagels should be.

Bagels are one of the more curious items of the bread world. Small, hard, chewy and dense, they're just about everything good bread isn't supposed to be. But what can I say, that's the aesthetic of bagels. Good ones, like this one from one of my favorite West Village spots, have a nice glossy golden exterior and (very important) a hole you can actually see through. Under the hood we've got a (mostly) tight crumb filled with (mostly) small bubbles:

This tight crumb is the key to a bagel's firm texture, and what makes it slice and toast so well. Some truly hard-core bagel makers, in fact, might fault this particular baker for not having a more consistent, tighter inside. But then there's a lot of variety in New York, everything from the fluffy Einstein Brothers' dinner roll to the old school steel-belted radial. The main difference between them isn't so much technique, but water content (I'll explain more about that later).

Of course there are toppings, though I confess I like mine plain. A good bagel should be a good bagel without the toasted onions, cheddar cheese or (shudder) sun dried tomatoes and pesto. I mean, that's what the cream cheese and lox are for, am I right? Some things are best when they're simple.

They're not just for Jones anymore.

People seem to be forever debating the origin of the bagel, but the fact is, nobody really knows it. The earliest printed reference to the bagel comes from a public edict issued in Krakow, Poland in the year 1610. It decrees that all women, upon giving birth to a child, are to be given a gift of bagels (I wonder...could it still be in effect?). However that's just one piece of paper that happens to mention the bagel at one particular point in history. Obviously bagels were well-established breads at that time, at least in Krakow.

Some food historians theorize that the bagel originated in Jewish communities in South Germany well before 1610, which is possible, yet there's no actual documentation for that. Other historians point out the bagel's close resemblance to the pretzel, which could in theory mean that it's a product of early Christian, possibly Roman, invention. It's well known that the Romans were fond of boiling their dinner rolls before they baked them, which lends some credence to the idea. But in truth, the bagel is a bread of mystery.

Even the name is controversial. On one side you have the German theory, which says that "bagel" comes from the German verb "beigen" which means "to bend". On the other side are those who claim that the word comes from the Yiddish "beygel" which means a ring or bracelet. Now, I'm not a linguist, but aren't those two languages related? And if indeed they are, what's the argument about?

There are a few food historians out there, Russian ones, who claim the bagel was a Russian invention. However I have to interject here that I once spent some time in Russia in college. The various state-sanctioned tours I took brought me to the homes of the Russian inventors of the telephone, baseball, break dancing and Kung Fu. So, let's just say they have a credibility problem in my eyes.

The important thing is that the bagel is here now. Jewish, German, Roman, early Christian or Russian, I bet they all taste equally good with lox.

Took most of the morning off to go searching for a quantity of osage orange firewood. This wood has an almost mystical reputation among fire builders, since when dried and burned it emits more BTU's than any other lumber type in North America. It may be just the fuel I need to get my brick oven up and running properly. A friend here in town told me his father had a stand of such trees (commonly known as hedgeapple trees) on his property out in hill and valley country about an hour east of town. Better still, he told me, his father had cut and stacked a number of fallen limbs a few years ago, and the wood had never been touched.

Sure enough when we got there we found a long row of osage trees that someone had once planted as a windbreak, running along the edge of one of his father's hay fields. Beneath them were various piles of small logs, neatly stacked, waiting to be loaded. I couldn't have been more excited if it was money (well, maybe money). We pulled the truck into the field and started hefting the logs into my friend's pickup. We'd been loading maybe half an hour when out of the blue he said "I wonder when we'll find our first rattlesnake?"

Er...huh?

"Oh you can find timber rattlers all around this area," he said. "They love old wood piles like this. Just don't put your hand down in any holes." I was wearing work gloves, though for some reason that didn't make me feel much better. "Actually I wouldn't worry," he said, smiling. "My father hasn't seen a timber rattler in years." The smile ran off his face and he looked off into the distance, evidently disappointed. "Nothing out here but copperheads anymore."

Oh good...I think. What was wrong with my Maytag again?

It seems that Bon Appétit magazine has declared pudding to be the hot dessert of the year. If they say so.

If you're in the mood for bagel-making this week or weekend, there are a couple of things I should mention about the recipe to the right. First, you don't strictly need malt powder, nondiastatic malt, or malt syrup to make great bagels. But then they don't hurt either. Any of them are useful for bagel-making. Malt powder and nondiastatic malt add more flavor that sweetness. Malt syrup adds more sweetness than flavor. Of the three, the syrup is the easiest to get. It should be available at any health food store (Whole Foods, if there's one in your area, usually carries it).

The other issue is the flour. You want the highest protein (gluten) flour you can find. Typically that means bread flour. It doesn't have to be King Arthur of course, though that frankly is about the best flour you can buy (better than most bakeries). Just make sure whatever you buy is unbleached, since the bleaching and bromating process affects protein strength. If you're lucky, you might be able to turn up a bag of flour specifically marked "for bread machines". That stuff, regardless of the brand, usually has the highest protein content of any commercially available flour.

If you're feeling gutsy, you can go for the gold and hit up a local bakery or pizza place for some real high-gluten flour. High-gluten flour isn't available in stores, since it's only useful for bakery breads, bagels and pizza crusts. But it's the thing to have when you're trying to replicate bit of the Bronx in your kitchen.

Why all the concern over gluten? Let's just say it means the difference between a good honest bagel and a dinner roll with a hole in the middle. Much more on the chemistry of gluten as the week progresses.

It happens every time we go to Manhattan. The wife visits her favorite bagel shop (Second Avenue Bagels) and for the next six months I'm under the gun to produce fresh bagels at home. It's funny, there are actually some pretty decent bagels made right here in Louisville (some truly awful ones too), but then nothing beats a hot fresh home version. King Arthur's site doesn't allow hot linking anymore, so I'll just put up the URL to the recipe I'll be using this week: www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/recipe.jsp?recipe_id=R242

One detail of my dessert trends tour that I failed to mention yesterday was a visit the wife and I paid to Jacques Torres Chocolate on Hudson Street in SOHO. SOHO (a sort-of anagram for SOuth of HOuston — pronounced HOW-ston — Street) was once a pop art mecca. These days the galleries are almost completely gone, replaced by high-end retail experiences of which Jacques Torres Chocolate is but one. Mrs. Pastry was chomping at the milk chocolate-enrobed bit to get there. I was considerably less interested, for I remembered all too clearly what happened the last time we'd tried to sample some of Mr. Torres' wares...

The year was 2003. Mrs. Pastry had her first bun in the oven and we'd skedaddled to Manhattan for a weekend getaway. Life-altering events were at hand, and we were eager to get our last dose of the New York scene until God-only-knew-when. In typical style we were wandering south Manhattan, testing the wife's sea legs and wondering if she had the stamina to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. For Jaques Torres, a.k.a. Mr. Chocolate, had just opened his new shop in DUMBO (that's Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), an area literally nestled among the structural supports of the Brooklyn Bridge. Only it's over on the Brooklyn side (hence the "Manhattan Bridge" thing), so you need to hike to get there. Oh sure there are easier ways to get from point A to point B in Manhattan (cabs spring to mind) but so Mrs. Pastry reasons, great chocolate experiences need to be earned. I love her for that. She fixed me with a steely gaze and said: Let's do it.

Bothers and sisters I can tell you it was a darn long walk. Just getting to the bridge was an effort for her, to say nothing of the long waddle across the bridge itself, dodging cyclists and joggers in headphones. When we finally got to the other side she slumped down on a stone bench, covered in sweat and panting, and we still had many blocks to go. Ambling down the hill into this dark little neighborhood, we had to wind our way around a sea of trucks and trailers. Clint Eastwood was filming the movie Million Dollar Baby there, so the atmosphere was crowded and confused. After some initial fumbling around we caught sight of the sign in the distance. The wife's spirits soared as we marched toward the cups of hot chocolate the New York Times had compared favorably to ambrosia. When we got there — and I'm sure you can see this coming — it was closed. Why, no one could say since we were there during posted business hours. Mrs. Pastry stumbled to the curb, flopped down and wept.

Now, some of you tougher men out there, stouter souls than I, might be able to steel yourselves against the sight of your seven-months-pregnant wife weeping in the gutter. Me, I'm not made of such stuff. So there and then I vowed that one day I would take revenge on Mr. Chocolate, most likely by purchasing one of his overrated confections and not liking it.

That opportunity came this past Saturday, when, umbrellas in hand, when set out through the driving rain to find Mr. Chocolate's new flagship store on Hudson Street. It wasn't difficult to find since it's in the far west of SOHO where there's little else aside from warehouses. I have to admit it was a very impressive looking operation from the outside. Very industrial with towering glass walls, it provides near total transparency into Torres' chocolate and pastry making processes. We collapsed our umbrellas and went in. Being a rainy day we were the only ones in the shop, save to say for the staff, and to my surprise and horror, Jacques Torres himself, who was hunched over a nearby table engaged in deep conversation with a small round Chinese man who, very interestingly, was speaking to Torres in fluent French.

My grip tightened around my folded Samsonite as I briefly contemplated giving him the business end of the thing (borrowed from the hotel, it had a nice thick wooden handle). But then I am by nature a man of peace. And anyway, where better to sting a man of Torres' conceits than to clock him where it really hurts — right smack in the ego? We shopped.

Quality over quantity is the wife's mantra when it comes to chocolate. She'll nibble away like chipmunk at a tiny square of chocolate all afternoon if it's good enough. But then it takes a while to find just the right thing. Oblivious to the presence of Torres, she engaged one of the enthusiastic store clerks while I looked over the machines. By the time I'd finished touring the plant, being careful to keep the necessary distance from Mr. Chocolate, Mrs. Pastry had made her selection, a small square of dark chocolate bark plus a sample of hot chocolate the clerk had given her. For my part I picked out a chocolate-striped cookie. We sat. Watching the wife eagerly unwrap her treasure, I pointed out the celebrity in the corner, at which time she paled slightly and asked that I not embarrass her. As luck had it, Torres finished his conversation just then, got up and strode into the back. Mrs. Pastry relaxed and nibbled her chocolate. A few minutes later we got up ourselves, assembled our things, and headed for the door. As we went I pulled the cookie out of its plastic bag and took a bite, determined not to like it. I didn't.

Honor satisfied, we continued on with our day.

I got so busy settling back in yesterday I forgot to pay tribute to Bo Diddley, who died yesterday at his home in Florida at the age of 79. Bo Diddley will forever be remembered for inventing the bomp bomp bomp a-womp-bomp rhythm that George Thorogood popularized with his cover of Who Do You Love. Bo is in a very select pantheon of musicians who can claim to have invented a beat. Enjoy that rhythm (plus some slick dance moves) here. Oh, and he also invented the square guitar.

Well I'm back from Manhattan, and none too soon. Any more decadent franchise foods and I would have popped. Normally New York isn't like that for me. The wife is usually busy with something-or-other at NYU and I'm left to roam. Which I do, obsessively. I walk, walk, walk, up the island, down the island, across the island, round and round in circles on the island. On a typical day I'll do 150 blocks, easy. For all that I tend not to eat much, subsisting on the odd bagel, slice of pizza or felafel ball. It's the energy of the place, it holds me up. By the time I leave I've usually worn the heels off a pair of shoes and lost three pounds, but I've re-familiarized myself with one of my very favorite places.

This time was different since there was no academic business to attend to, so Mrs. Pastry and I were wandering together. Being as short and slight as she is, she needs to make regular stops for rest, nourishment and bathroom breaks. Works for me. I have nothing against food, mind you, I just get so distracted by what's going on in the New York streets, I simply forget. As it happened, there were several items on my culinary hit list.

One of them was Beard Papa, a bizarrely-named Japanese cream puff chain that I've mentioned once or twice here on the blog. I've been hearing about Beard Papa for a while now (the name is a rough translation of the Japanese word for "grandfather" I'm told). It's such a weird idea (Japaneses bearded cream puffs?) that I resolved to try it at the first opportunity. That opportunity came when the wife and I were traipsing along Broadway down around Astor Place. I looked up and there it was, staffed entirely by Japanese. The cream puffs were good but not great. Surprisingly crispy for having to sit as long as they do, they're nice and sweet and light. It's the cream that's the bummer, more vanilla pudding (which is typical of these sorts of fast food-type affairs). I could see where they could be addictive though. Just a few blocks away we stumbled over another one in the West Village off 6th (again with an all-Japanese staff). I guess there are four or five in Manhattan these days. The other US locations are situated mostly where you'd expect to find Japanese people: California (where there are some two dozen) and Hawaii. Two or so years ago the company announced plans to open more than a dozen in the Midwest, but obviously canceled them in short order. Honestly, I can't see something like that working very well off the coasts. Americans love sweets and baked things, but unlike the Japanese, they aren't as a rule nuts for French-style pastry.

The other franchise that I was anxious to try was Pinkberry. The celebrity-fueled hype over this (again) mostly-California chain has been intense since 2005 when the first of them opened. Another Asian import, this time from Korea, Pinkberry is credited with single-handedly reinvigorating frozen yogurt as an idea. These days there are about fifty of them in California and maybe fifteen in New York — but that's not counting the imitators, which are legion. The buzz about Pinkberry is that the yogurt, being based on an exotic Korean lactic acid bacteria culture, is lighter and tangier than the Central Asian strains we're all familiar with (those of you still experiencing PTSD over last fall's extensive posts on the subject know what I'm talking about). And in fact it is quite tangy and citrus-y, somewhere between traditional yogurt and Italian lemon ice. It's downright addictive with all the goofy toppings they put on it (everything from fresh fruit to Cocoa Pebbles). No wonder people on the coasts call it "Crackberry".

Other than that I was amused to be handed a brochure for Insomnia Cookies, something many of you who live in big university towns are already familiar with. What a great idea: bringing hot cookies and milk to people in the middle of the night. How can you lose? We were, however, too full that night to go ordering cookies.

Why? Because we ate at Otto, Mario Batali's notorious pizzeria on Fifth. The guy owns a score of restaurants these days, so even though there's only one Otto, it still counted to me as a franchise. And indeed it really gives the impression of a franchise when you go into it. Which isn't a bad thing. It's just got that familiar sort of factory-like feeling that anyone who's every eaten at a hot "concept" restaurant knows very well. Were we really looking to get both barrels of Batali square in the face we might have gone to the legendary Babbo (we did in fact stay right across the street), but on the one hand we didn't have $300 to drop on dinner and on the other I was curious about his pizza crust. It was cracker-thin and crispy, not at all what I was expecting. But good. Nicely charred on the bottom. Since there wasn't anything baked on the menu for dessert, no Gina DePalma-created cakes or tarts, we followed Otto up with a $7 scoop of gelato at Grom. I was done for the evening.

So that, in a nutshell, was my major market baking and dessert trends tour of Manhattan. I enjoyed it, but now that we're up-to-date I think we'll go back to the old haunts the next time. When we first met and were kicking around Greenwich Village some ten years ago now (Lord that makes me feel old), the future Mrs. Pastry was a master of the cheap eats scene. She was a student, you see, and had a scant $300 a month to live on after rent. On the rare occasion she was able to eat out, the food had to be cheap and it had to be good. What's true of Manhattan — and which it is true of very few other places — is that you can have some of the most memorable meals of your life for under ten bucks...and then again over a hundred (what's in between is hit and miss at best). Mama's Food Shop on Third Street between A and B in Alphabet City was one of those great cheap spots. Next time we'll go back.

The thing about eating anywhere, and I'm not saying anything new here, is that the indigenous foods — the things the natives have been making and enjoying since forever — are always the best. So, in absence of a spot that you are absolutely certain is worth $300 (as Babbo would have been), always ask somebody who lives locally where to go. On a tip from just such a person we had lunch at a place called Barney Greengrass the Sturgeon King on Amsterdam, where we ate potato latkes off a grey formica tabletop next to the worst wallpaper you've ever seen. The small mound of smoked sturgeon, scrambled eggs and caramelized onions I ate there ranks with the best meals of my life (worth every dime of the seventeen bucks it cost). It was, by a mile, the culinary highlight of the trip.