Time to Make the Bagels!

TIME TO

by Cris Cadiz

ba

Winter Capla

74CT FOOD & FARM / SUMMER 2019

MAKE

nson photos

gels

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“

THERE’S NOT A LOT OF PLACES

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CHEF BRETT LAFFERT ADMITS he’s NOT a morning person. But a happy, Zen time arrives at 5:30 a.m., while he makes bagels at Coriander, his cozy little restaurant in Eastford, Connecticut. “It’s one of my favorite things to do here,” says Laffert. “The process is satisfying. I’m not a morning person, not at all. But I get my coffee and I’m doing this with music in the background… it’s kind of nice. Especially when [the bagels] are performing the way they should.”

There’s not a lot of places that make their own bagels by hand. At Coriander they bake a batch every morning. “Like any fresh bread, it’s always best if you can get it right then,” says Laffert. “I do have customers who come when we open to get them warm right out of the oven. That’s pretty common in the baking world. Some places will freeze them but it’s not the same.”

THAT

MAKE

THEIR OWN

BAGELS BY HAND.

”

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CORIANDER BAGELS TY

SELL OUT EV

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After bouncing around the restaurant world from Big Sur to Nantucket and a stint at the Vanilla Bean Café in Pomfret, Laffert opened Coriander almost ten years ago. The small, red clapboard building anchors a sleepy 5-way intersection in rural northeast Connecticut. Coriander serves tasty breakfast and lunch seven days a week plus dinner Wednesday through Friday. The focus is local and seasonal home-style cooking. Laffert crafts a new dinner menu every week, and Coriander is BYOB - minus the cork fee.

Laffert learned how to make bagels while working at the Vanilla Bean in Pomfret. There he met David Emigh, a professor who lived in the area and was an amateur baker. “Dave was a really nice guy who looked like Gandalf, with a big beard. He’d come in and we’d let him play around in the kitchen and make some breads,” Laffert recalls. “We did bagels one time together. This was when I was thinking about doing my own thing.” Laffert asked David to work at Coriander and do some baking. “Initially I thought I could make sandwiches with our own breads…. I had grandiose expectations. I quickly

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PICALLY

ERY DAY.

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“

LAFFERT SPRINKLES EACH BAGEL WITH SEASON

WHICH STICK TO THE STIL

DEHYDRATED, CHOPPED ONI

TINY BLACK POPPY SE

PEARLY WHITE SESAME SE

AND SHREDS OF ASIA

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realized I didn’t have time or staff to do that. David showed me the bagel process and we’ve been tweaking it ever since he left for somewhere in Arizona.”

INGS,

L-WET DOUGH.

ON

AND GARLIC,

EDS,

COARSE SALT,

EDS,

GO CHEESE.

Laffert always liked bagels and they were getting good at it. “Bread is so wide; you can do so many different types of it. I wanted to pick one thing and do it well,” he says. “It’s a point of pride that we make our own bagels and baked goods here.” This includes cookies, muffins, scones, bars and sometimes cakes and pies. “Our cookies are well known, dinner plate size, and we make really good muffins.” The bagels typically sell out every day. A full sheet tray is usually gone by breakfast. They triple their batches on weekends. If they don’t sell out, Coriander’s bagels are seasoned, sliced and toasted into crisp, delicious chips, which also disappear rapidly.

According to Wikipedia, bagels originated in Poland. The first known mention of bagels was in Kraków’s Jewish community ordinances in 1610. Today, bagels are an all-American staple for breakfast, lunch, snacks and sometimes dinner. Once an ethnic specialty, today you can buy them in most grocery stores, fresh or even frozen. But the best bagels, like any bread product, are tastiest fresh out of the oven. Interesting bagel fact: the “roll-with-a-hole” design is hundreds of years old. The shape provides more cooking surface but is also a good way to carry and display bagels: just string them on a rope or wooden dowels.

Laffert says making bagels is a fairly simple threestep process. Make the dough, form and proof

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it. Boil in water. Bake in the oven. “I guess the selling and eating is the last part,” he jokes. “The whole process after the dough is made is maybe half an hour.” I get to watch a smooth, practiced demonstration by Laffert.

First, Laffert makes the dough: he allows yeast to bloom in water, then adds flour and salt. The dough rests for half an hour in the walk-in cooler. Then he cuts and forms the dough into the round, palm-sized bagel shapes. Laffert first shapes the dough into a snake: “It’s a bakers’ trick to help me get consistent weight.” Then he slices it into pieces and weighs each section: 5 ounces each. “Some days you just can’t get it right on. Your hand ends up being a pretty good scale.” The lumps of dough look like biscuits now, but Laffert rounds them into balls between his palms. He also shows me how to pull and crimp with my fingers into the same shape. “There’s something satisfying about working with dough. It’s very tactile,” he says.

Next Laffert works the balls into the classic “rollwith-a-hole” shape. A little manual dexterity helps! Bagel disco move: take a 5 oz. ball of proofed bagel dough. Punch both thumbs through the middle. Keep one thumb in the hole and insert the other thumb in the opening from the opposite side. Quickly revolve both thumbs in opposite directions, opening a nice round hole in the middle of the dough. Presto: bagel shape! Laffert says that with New York-style bagels, they roll it out, give a twist and connect two ends. “We do it a little differently here.” Then the uncooked bagels rise slowly overnight in the cooler--puffy, pale and round.

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The next morning, the proofed bagels are cooked. Laffert plops each into a pan of boiling water (with a tablespoon of baking soda to help browning). They pop back up to bob in the rolling boil. Laffert doesn’t time it; his practiced eye knows when they’re done. He raises one partly up out of the water and lets it sink again. “These floated up nice,” he says. “You can’t really walk away from it. Depending on the dough and the water temperature it can behave differently. It tells you how long it wants to be in the water. The other morning, they were really proofed,” he says. “They were in and out of the water in about 45 seconds. You don’t want to cook them for too long.”

“

I DO

HAVE CUSTOMERS

WHO COME WHEN WE OPEN

TO GET BAGELS WARM RIGHT OUT OF THE OVEN.

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The bobbing bagels expand a little more, are rescued from the water and placed on a baking pan coated with cooking spray. Laffert sprinkles each with seasonings, which stick to the still-wet dough. Dehydrated, chopped onion and garlic, tiny black poppy seeds, coarse salt, pearly white sesame seeds, and shreds of Asiago cheese. He slides them into a 350º convection oven to brown for about 15 minutes. As they cook, they gain a chewy crust and soft, dense interior. They smell heavenly and the melting cheese drips savory golden fat.

“I like bread in general,” Laffert confesses. “I probably shouldn’t have it cause of carbs and sugar but I’m gonna go for it anyway. It’s delicious and the process might take a little while but it’s not super intensive. It’s nice to do old-school with your hands and the water. It’s a Zen thing, before the chaos starts of cooking a thousand eggs.”

Laffert says making bagels is something anyone can do. “The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. My first attempts weren’t very good at all.” Try it! Or, if you’re afraid of yeast dough--like me--find a place that makes them fresh, like Coriander. Then stay for breakfast. Their outdoor seating in nice weather is more than pleasant. Some customers place special requests for bagels; Laffert suggests calling ahead if you want to buy a dozen.

To visit Coriander, see coriandercafeeastford.com.

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“THEY SMELL HEAVENLY

AND THE MELTING CHEESE DRIPS SAVORY

GOLDEN FAT.

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