Bagels, Schmears, and a Nice Piece of Fish - Cookbook Author Cathy Barrow

Welcome to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. I'm your host Chris spear. On the show. I have conversations with culinary entrepreneurs and people in the food and beverage industry who took a different route. They're caterers research chefs personal chefs cookbook authors, food truckers, farmers, cottage bakers and all sorts of culinary renegades. I myself fall into the personal chef category as I started my own personal chef business perfect little bites 11 years ago. And while I started working in kitchens in the early 90s I've literally never worked in a restaurant. This week. I have food writer and recipe developer Cathy Barrow. You might have seen her work in the Washington Post, New York Times, garden and gun, local palette and Southern Living. She's authored the cookbooks Mrs. wheelbarrows practical pantry, pie squared and when pies fly. And now Cathy is back with a new book titled Bagels, Schmears, and a Nice

a Whole Brunch of Recipes to Make at Home. The book is going to be coming out on Tuesday, March 15. So in preparation for this, Kathy sent me a copy of the book, and I have to say I really love it. I'd always been kind of scared about making bagels. I don't know why it just sounded like it would be a lot of work. I'd never done it before. So I've had the book a little over a month now. And I've made two batches of bagels, and I'm very happy with both of them. If you actually heard my podcast episode about receiving criticism, it was about my bagels, but that's a whole nother thing. So I want to have Kathy to come on and not only talk about her book, but dive a little deeper into bagel making. Having had the book and made some bagels, I wanted to talk about things like barley malt. One of the ingredients that her recipe calls for is barley malt syrup, I'd had some challenges finding it. So she talks about where to find it and actually how to appropriately put substitutions in if you can't find that. We also talk about the right kind of flour to use, again, how to make your own flour blend to get it to the right protein content. If you're not able to find the best flour to make bagels as well. I really do have to say how easy these bagels were to make. Again, I am not a professional bread maker by any means. And I think this is so easy. If you love eating bagels, you're gonna want to pick up this book, you can find a link in the show notes as to where you can get it. I mean, it's available anywhere, but I have a quick link for you pick up this book. It's not just about bagels. She has great recipes for smears. Things like locks all the accompaniments. She has salads in there. You know, one of the things we talked about on the show is how much of her life growing up and some of her favorite recipes made it in here. She's got great stories, and I think it's just a great cookbook to read besides the bagel making part. So I really hope you enjoy this episode. I usually start the episode after word from our sponsor. I will say right now our sponsor is baking steal. You might have heard that Andrus was the guest on last week's episode. Also, we talked about it on this episode because one of the best ways to make an amazing bagel at home is to make it on a baking steal. I know not everyone has one so you can make them other ways. It's in her book. But if you have a baking steal, you should use it if you don't have one you should totally pick one up because it's the best way to make pizza at home bagels at home and also works great as a flat top to do like Smash burgers. I make my tortillas on them which I'm doing tacos at home tonight. It's Taco Tuesday. So this is my baking, steal, add for the week, go out and buy a baking steal. There's a link in the show notes. And as always, if you love the show, please share it with everyone, you know. Thanks so much and have a great week. Hey, Kathy, how's it going? So great to have you back on the show.

It's really nice to be here. Thank you so much.

I'm looking forward to talking about this book, I got a sneak peek of this book. And I've already made some bagels. So I want to get even more bagel wisdom from you today.

When I saw the photos on Instagram, it looks like you caught right on no problem.

No, I was so intimidated. Like before making them I don't know, I've never tried in my life to make bagels before at all because it just I don't know, it sounded like it was hard. I don't even think I really read that much about it before I just had this idea of how hard it was like you had to boil them and you had to bake them. And it was this big deal. And it really wasn't.

Yeah, that was really what I was anxious to do with the book was break it down in such a way that it became a no big deal. moment I make bagels so frequently. Now, it is literally no big deal. It takes me 1520 minutes from getting the ingredients out to washing everything up. And you know they're in the refrigerator overnight.

Amazing. And I think if anyone's made any kind of bread, it's really intuitive at that point. Like if you've made a loaf of bread or anything, it's easier than making a brioche. Like it doesn't have like three or four rises with punch downs. It's one of the rights I've ever had to make.

And you don't have to roll it out in any way. And yeah,

so you've been on our show before. So some people probably have heard that many people probably know who you are. But could you give us like a little bit of background about who you are and what it is you do?

Sure. I have been writing about food since 2008, which is a ridiculously long time ago, every time I realized that. But it feels like just yesterday, I was a blogger, I was given an opportunity to write for the New York Times, and then the Washington Post for a few years each of them and it was a great, great way to learn about writing and hone my skills. My first book was a preserving book, Mrs. wheelbarrows practical pantry. And then I did two pie books pi squared, which celebrates large slab pies to serve a crowd. And when pies fly, which celebrates the small hand pies and smaller versions of crusty goodness. So two years ago, actually, two days before we shut down for, for lockdown for COVID. I closed the deal on writing a book on bagels, and I've been thinking about it for years, but I had it hadn't coalesced until that winter. And, you know, struck the deal and wrote the book. And now it's two years later, and I have this beautiful thing to look at.

So your book is bagels, smears and a nice piece of fish.

That's right, a whole bunch of things. Dessert.

When did you first make your first bagel? Like have you had this long love affair with bagels?

Successfully? I made my first successful bagel maybe six years ago, but I had been trying to make them maybe since the 80s. Yeah, and I made a lot of bad bagels.

So what was the unlock? Like? Did you find a secret? Or was it just incrementally getting better and better doing it?

The Washington Post did an article on making bagels and they identified high gluten flour. And I guess I you know I went in and out of experimenting on bagels, I would go into it for a few months and then I give up and go away for two or three years and then come back and do it again. And I had never done enough research into flour types. And suddenly the post identified high gluten flour and I read about is like oh, well duh. I mean that makes that nice shiny exterior gives you two gives you tenderness. That's the whole thing. And I started ordering high gluten flour from King Arthur right away and that's when I started knocking out good bagels.

Now you can't just buy that in any grocery store. Can you the high gluten flour.

You know you can't and I I'm hoping that this interest in making bagels at home might start to make it available more widely. But there's a workaround. Most of us keep all purpose flour in the kitchen. And all purpose flour has a protein level of 10 point. I don't know I'm not going to give you a number because I'll get it wrong. Anyway. high gluten flour has that higher protein levels of 14.2%. And in order to achieve that, you can add vital wheat and gluten, which is available at almost every grocery store. It's a little packet, vital wheat gluten vital wheat gluten flour. And you can add that two teaspoons per cup, basically, of all purpose flour. And you've created this strong haiku the flour.

It's amazing. I mean, it was so easy. We have common market here in town, they have the bulk ban, I went and it was like 75 cents worth of vital wheat and gluten and just mixed up a bunch of have it in a bit. And because I knew I was going to be making a couple batches of it. So I just broke out the scale made a bin and now I have a bin of my bagel flour

that I'm going to use. Yeah, you should try it for pizza dough too. Oh, really,

I hadn't thought about that for pizza dough, because I'm big into making pizzas. So

think about how a really strong dough on pizza gives you that great exterior crust

on how we're going to be making pizza this weekend. So give

it a try. I think that work around makes me happy because I know that it's onerous for people to think about multiple types of flour in their kitchen or having to order from mail order. And if I can find an easier way for people to get to the bagel, and I'm happy about that.

Well, I think also getting the good crossed, like you know, now I have a baking steal, which worked really well for this. And I feel like that's a massive improvement over just you know, baking it on a sheet tray in your oven, which can be done Correct?

Correct. It can be, I would say if you're going to bake it with a sheet pan, flip that sheet pan upside down. So you're creating a hot metal surface heated up in the oven, and then slide your parchment with your bagels right onto that hot surface. It's not as conductive as the baking steel, but it's still going to be a nice hot surface. If you bake your bagels inside your baking sheet. It causes some airflow and some condensation. And basically steaming. And that won't give you the bottom will remain soft and not crispy.

It's all about getting the crispy bread at home. It really is. I just had Andrus from baking steel on the podcast, actually, the episode airs today. So it's a great tie in there, you know, and it's phenomenal that I had already gotten your book and I got to talk to him about how it's mentioned in there. And now. So our listeners by the time this airs will be able to go back and listen to that and we got to talk about how he created it and all the really cool things you can do with it. And I've I've loved working with mine.

I've had mine for several years, I used it also in my slab pie book. Because if you're baking in a nine by 13 baking sheet, a quarter sheet pan and put your pie, right on that baking steel, you get a crispy lower crust. It's like a guarantee. The crispy bottom crust was really one of those things I was trying to achieve with the pie book and the baking steel was the perfect solution for that.

And one of the other things talking about ingredients is you know I emailed you I can't find barley malt syrup anymore like zero people have and I went into mom's I met in a common market they all said they discontinued it a couple years ago. I used Honey Do you think that's like the second best or? Or is it worth buying it on the internet?

They have not discontinued barley malt syrup.

Like the store like the store said they were carrying it like that just people weren't buying it.

I think actually what's happened is that there has been a pandemic issue with barley malt syrup. It's harder to find something having to do with hops barley beer production, I don't even understand the details behind it. But it is still available. You have to get it online basically it's easier. But there's also a product available from King Arthur possibly other places, which is the barley malt syrup in powder form non diastatic malt powder, and you can use that one to one tablespoon of barley malt tablespoon of the powder it achieves the same thing gives you that multi flavor that sweetener so that's one solution. The other is honey or maple syrup. You don't get that malt you don't get that traditional bagel smell. But it's I think they're very good with honey

and the powders sounds great. I'm gonna have to look into that because I was really annoyed like I wanted to make like the best bagel I could following the best way to do it. And I bought barley malt syrup before and I literally went to five stores and I've even gotten down to like Whole Foods down you know, like in like gaithersburg. I thought like they'll probably have it Nope, they didn't have it down there. I'm like Why does nobody have this? All of this

has something to do with barley production and that was cut back and can't get the barley whatever

well and now there's the great cream cheese shortage to like that. Nobody saw that coming. I think it's eased up a little bit, but one week I can I couldn't even get regular cream cheese at Wegmans, but you've taught people how they can make their own cream cheese do

I have Yes, DIY cream cheese is pretty easy. Um, it's a four day process, but it's so good. They taste what it's supposed to be like, without the stabilizers and the gums and all the things that they put in cream cheese. It's pretty great.

So you'd say worth it. Give it a try.

Definitely worth it. It's very there's very little to do. It makes itself you just hang it up somewhere and let it drain.

Do you have a favorite bagel or bagel combo? Like for me? It's an everything bagel with vegetable cream cheese. Like if you're going to a place What's your go to?

My bagel order is an untoasted everything bagel with cream cheese, lox and a slice of tomato if the tomatoes in season,

and it's not okay to toast a bagel.

That's a high jumping on that. Why? Because my husband's a toaster. Um, you know, I feel like I have to stand back and let people do what they want to with their vehicle. And I'm not going to harsh anybody's bagel.

I think it also depends on the freshness factor to you know, like if you go in the morning somewhere and get them from a shop but my wife used to go to the shop that notoriously would not toast anyone's bagel. Like they drew a line in the sand that like they weren't gonna do. I feel like that's kind of anti customer service. You know? It's

like, yeah, give them what they want.

And my, I don't wanna call it a hot take, but like, I will not eat a fruit like blueberry bagel, cinnamon raisin bagel. I just can't do like I don't like sweet stuff for breakfast anyway, like, I very rarely have like pancakes or waffles. I want that savory. But I like blueberry bagel. To me. It's just the worst thing out there. But I know people like them.

Well, I had to have a lot of conversations with my dead relatives about the section in the book that takes bagels to a whole new direction. And one of those is blueberry. And I have to say that I made the distinction that the wild blueberries a little tiny wild blueberries are better in this case than the big ones as the big ones kind of smashed and get green and it's not appealing and they don't carry their flavor in the same way. So I went to make the best blueberry bagel. I could let me just say that. But there are a lot of bagels in the section that I call bagels my grandmother wouldn't recognize that are legitimately delicious, particularly in sandwiches.

Panera has that like cinnamon crunch bagel, and I don't get Panera a lot, but something about that is really delicious. I will eat one of those. But other than that I'm not a sweet bagel guy. But, you know, maybe I'll give it a try. Now if I'm going to start making bagels at home might be worth branching out there.

I would say the one that's really delicious is the granola bagel. That one is fantastic.

Okay, so that's the gateway not savory bagel. Great. Correct. And then you also have a lot of stuff in there. What else is in the book? You do like salmon preparations?

Well, there's a whole chapter on smears which I think is sort of critical because a bagel without a schmear. Is it lonely. And like the bagels there are some sweet and some savory ones. And I just love all of them. Honestly, there's not a single one in there that I wouldn't eat. But you're right, there's how to make your own locks at home, which is just a couple of days and solvents over very, very easy. There's Kipling salmon, which is hot smoking, and I show you how to set it up in a walk and do it that way, which is pretty fast and fun. And guaranteed to set off the smoke alarm. All the deli salads that you know, egg salad, chicken salad, tuna salad, and also smoked whitefish salad. There's a trout spread a couple of my family recipes, borscht chab, my grandfather's famous onions and eggs, which are just the most delicious thing ever. And then all kinds of sandwiches.

So it sounds like it's a very personal book, like you've really brought some of your family stuff into it.

It's funny, when you're writing books, you have this idea that you're exposing your personal side. And I felt like all of my books were pretty personal. And then I got to this one, and it just, I mean, my memory bank was blown open. I opened up this beat up army green metal recipe box that belonged to my grandmother Mary and started going through it and looking at her handwriting and thinking a lot about what I ate as a kid and what she introduced me to, and this sort of essential foods that were in my family's at my family's table. And I started dreaming about those times and remembering details from her kitchen and my great grandmother's kitchen, things that had just been buried after, we won't talk how many decades. So it did end up being more personal than I ever expected. When I started writing it, I had dropped in a few things in the first draft, and my editor sent the note back was like, give me more, I want to hear more. And so I did, and it was really fun and gratifying. It's also nice that most of the reviews so far, have identified that personal aspect and, and appreciated. It's nice.

I think that's what makes a cookbook stand out as someone who has too many cookbooks, personally, you know, it's like, what makes us one day? What makes one bagel book different than another? I mean, you're probably not the first person, maybe the best person or, you know, but you know, how does one stand out? Like I think about pizza, and how, you know, I have like five different books on making pizza, I might have more but like, how do you decide which one you're going to read or which is going to be your go to if you're someone who's going to buy one. And for me, it's those little personal touches, where it's also the little stories and anecdotes. That's good to hear. I guess the stuff that everyone complains about on blog posts, right? Like, I've had enough of the like, skip to the stories just give me the recipe right, which that narrative is kinda tired. And now we're all kind of joking about it on Twitter.

You know, I blogged from 2008 forward for many, many years and heard that a lot. So and then, you know, wrote for newspapers where you write a head note, that's 500 600 words. I guess you just have to learn to scroll to the bottom if you don't care,

that you're doing a really fun kind of promotion with the book and like bagels at shops. Can you talk about that for a little bit?

I have to just give so many kudos to Chronicle Books and their marketing team. They're very, very creative. We had talks about this early on, about how connected I felt readers and bagel eaters are, I think it's I go to a bagel shop. It's not at all unusual to see somebody sitting with a book and having their bagel and coffee. So it was a logical connection. And we went to cities where I knew or had heard about exceptional bagels, and just sort of ferreted out the right bookstore, the right bagel shop. And so until let's just turn the next couple of days. If you buy a preorder a book, you get a coupon to get a free bagel and schmear at a local bagel shop. And that's just seven cities. They did a great job with that.

That's really cool. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before.

No, I don't think I have either. I mean, really fun. And we have some more fun things coming up.

What's your plan for promotion? Are you doing like a little book tour?

I am I'm doing a small tour in person and a small tour virtually. And all of that will be on my website, Kathy borrow.com. I've got things up there already with links. I start March 13. And I'll be doing events at this point. Right through the middle of May. I'll be in San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and virtually I'll be doing bagel classes with the Manhattan JCC. And also with the 92nd Street Y and doing conversations with a library on Martha's Vineyard and a couple other places.

How far ahead do you start thinking like are not to get too far ahead. And you know, you've got a lot going on with this. But are you already thinking about what comes next?

Sure. I mean, it's what I do for a living. If I weren't thinking about that, then I'd have to be thinking that I'm, I'm done. But I might be I don't know. You know, I'm at an age where I could decide to retire. But my brains really busy. And I'm always making things and thinking about it. And I love writing cookbooks. I love writing recipes. I love having people read what I'm writing about making the food that I'm putting out there.

What's inspiring to you these days, like, is there any cuisine you're really interested in? Or if you're just to go make a meal this weekend? Like where are you drawing those things from?

I have a really terrific cookbook club that I've been part of for six years in DC. And we've been meeting virtually even through this whole weird time. And whoever hosts picks the cookbook or the author that we're going to dive into and in January of 2020 One, we looked into Japanese cooking for the first time. And I got the Morimoto cookbook and a couple of other cookbooks and I've been just obsessed with Japanese cooking for the last two years. It's just making us very happy. My husband's a vegetarian leans vegan. And so we can find a lot of things there that make us super happy.

That's a an avenue. I haven't really explored. I've done a little but I haven't spent enough time on Japanese cooking and food and is the Morimoto cookbook, a good cookbook.

I think it's very good. And it doesn't have as many vegetable dishes as I wanted. So I bought another one modern Japanese home cooking by Sonos. And I think some I don't remember her name exactly. But modern, Japanese home cooking, and that is more vegetable heavy. And also explores some things like Japanese breakfast, which I'm pretty interested in.

Very cool off to look into those. One of the questions I've been asking everyone this season is, what does it mean to you to be a chef? And I could interject my own opinions here. But I just like, take that question and run with it. What does that mean to you?

Well, I'm not a chef, I didn't go to culinary school. And I would never call myself one because of that. I'm a home cook, I'm a solid home cook with a no fear, let me put it that way. I am not afraid of failing in the kitchen, because I've done it a lot. And I think that's the way you learn. I, I guess I'm I'm very happy to be a recipe developer and a recipe writer. And, to me, the ability to use my recipes and successfully put together a meal that looks something like the one that I put together. And when I see my readers doing that, and posting pictures, it fills me with a lot of joy, and a sense of satisfaction. I put things out because I think they're delicious. And I want people to be able to replicate them without reading.

Well, I think you've done a really good job with that your books are are pretty straightforward. Like I don't think there's anything, I have all of your books, love them all. And I don't think I've ever encountered a recipe that, you know, I wasn't successful with I mean, you can always do better, right? Like the bagels the first time with a bagel for me, it's the shaping, which I think is probably the hardest part is like getting it down. So they don't look kind of misshapen if you're going to do the rolling them out. And the pinching like I think I pinched a little too hard. So then you have you know, it's nice and big, except for the one spot where it's kind of like squishy, and I'm trying to push it together on the side to get it to come back to shape.

One of the people who is planning to interview me on my book tour is Nancy Leeson and sent in Seattle, and one of her students looked at the bagels that she'd formed. And then what happens with those stretch marks. And now whenever I look at what I've made, all I can think about stretch marks. It's such a funny concept, you know, idea of shaping a bagel is such a skill that there was a union for it, starting back in the early 1900s. And they had apprentices and to this day, they're bagel rollers, they're called who are freelance and work all through New York in the middle of the night shaping bagels, it's, it's a talent and a skill. And so you're not going to knock them out the first time looking perfectly, it takes some work

and it is okay to have them in a ball and kind of poke a hole in actually, when I did mine, I did a test where I did three that way and three the other way and those came out better I felt like maybe it wasn't as traditional and I should have been, you know, doing the rolling and pinching but I had a lot of luck just kind of sticking my thumb through and then gently stretching them out and those and those ones looked a little better. I also like a smaller hole because I do a lot of like egg sandwiches and I hate when you have the big hole in the bushes through Yeah, and everything comes through so I don't mind it having a smaller hole there.

I recommend one of two ways in the book either the pokum or the rollem method so your error right in there. And this idea of being able to adjust the table to make the hole bigger or smaller according to the way you're going to use it. Isn't that brilliant? Isn't that great? That you can do that?

Absolutely yeah, we sometimes have to you know we've on occasion bought like the lenders frozen bagel and the holes on those are like huge those and the the Wegmans brand especially have these gigantic holes and

possible the sandwich and possibly

even though we try I've tried a number of days I made my daughter egg sandwich yesterday morning on one of those and it's like everything squishing out through the middle there. That's right. Well what happened we talked about what do you want to get into about your book, anything you have coming up

Well, there are a lot of personal stories in the book, their riddles, their jokes, their history lessons, I just hope people will pick it up and enjoy it.

I've already been telling people that this book's coming. I'm really excited about it. And there was another podcast for some reason we were talking about it as well. But thanks so much for the the copy. And I'd love to play with it. I think, this weekend, I've got some time. So maybe tonight, I'll get a batch ready. So that Saturday morning, we can have bagels on home and, you know, it's just one of those things like you gotta keep practicing. It's, you know, Anderson, I talked about that with pizza. You know, like, you have pizza crust, and you know, you're not going to nail it the first time and I've not had a lot of luck pitching pizza onto the steel, you know, be keep doing Oh, yeah. How bad can it be. And the same with bagels? Like, you know, the shape might be off a little bit, but they're still gonna be

my pizzas are open. Because of that, shaking it onto the steel, and it just like, compresses that perfect round becomes over? Well, we

talked about the fact of taking a page out of your book, building it on parchment on your appeal, and then sliding it on. And then after about a minute it kind of sets it's hot enough that then you can slide it out. So the last batch of pizzas I did I did it like that. Because after I never thought about putting parchment on there. It's like, Oh, of course you can put parchment. I mean, he warns with the pizza. He likes to use the broiler up top and you will catch your parchment on fire. I was just about

to tell you that do that. Yeah, three times in a row that I set the parchment on fire and my husband's now let's order pizza. But I'm going back in this weekend. I'm making one for sure. Yes,

those are the fun things that I love cooking. But the book is so wonderful. And I can't wait for everyone to check it out. There will be tons of links in the shownotes people will be able to find you your website, where to order the book. Where do you want? I mean, is there a place you'd like to send people online to find you or everywhere

you know, I'm I have a presence on Facebook, on Twitter, but I spend the most time on Instagram. That's where you'll find all of me. And I also wanted to mention that I have a newsletter now that I write every two weeks. It's called cook garden knit, repeat. Those are the three things that I'm doing with my life. And there's always a new recipe. There are a lot of links to things that I reading. You don't have to like all three of those things to read the newsletter. So it's free subscribe at my website.

Fantastic. Well, I'm down with the cooking and the gardening. I haven't taken up knitting yet, but who knows?

You never know. It's been really nice talking to you. Yeah,

it was really nice talking to you. Thanks so much for coming on the show and anything I can do to help get the word

out. Let me know. Thanks. Good luck with your weekend Badaling.

Thank you and to all of our listeners. This has been Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast, go to chefs without restaurants.org To find our Facebook group, mailing list and check database. The community's free to join. You'll get gig opportunities, advice on building and growing your business and you'll never miss an episode of our podcast. Have a great week.