Waffle Wars

One can rely on certain topics for inducing a charged debate on the internet. Politics. Religion. Which Star Trek captain was the best*. One does not, however, generally see waffles inspiring people to volley arguments through the wee hours of the morning.

One of my favorites from xkcd.com

It all began on Twitter. A friend asked for advice about buying a new kitchen appliance: she only had the money and space for one, and couldn't decide between a waffle iron and a sandwich maker. Replies were heavily weighted towards the waffle side - understandable, in my opinion, because who needs a machine to make a sandwich? It started to get weird when someone in the waffle camp shot down the grilled cheesist argument about melty cheese being better than waffles by saying you could melt cheese on waffles.

Whoa there.

Usually, I wouldn't get too worked up about waffles. They're pretty far down my list of preferred breakfast carbohydrates, behind pancakes, crepes, and french toast. But in what crazy world are people gumming up a waffle's tiny perfect squares with a melting slice of cheddar? "Waffles are for syrup!" I protested. Maybe whipped cream and strawberries if they're for dessert, but cheese is right out.

Then someone suggested Bearnaise sauce, and all hell broke loose. I just viscerally disliked the very idea of non-syrup toppings on waffles. 

Shortly after the Waffle Wars broke out, my friend Angelique asked me about chicken and waffles:

Allow me to expand on my response.

I don't understand the idea of "chicken and waffles" because:

1. It's a breakfast food paired with a not-breakfast food. "Steak and eggs" on a breakfast menu seems a little weird to me too. I feel like pork is an acceptable breakfast meat, but other meats don't belong with pancakes or waffles. I concede this may be my own cultural conditioning talking.
2. Wait, is chicken and waffles even FOR breakfast? Is it dinner? Where does it belong? I need labels. I like categories.
3. It's bone-in fried chicken, which is normally eaten with one's hands. But waffles are a fork food. I can't picture how one successfully eats this meal, especially since Google image searches lead me to believe that one is often piled on the other. Do I pick up the chicken and eat it, taking waffle bites from time to time? Do I fight the fried chicken pieces with a knife and fork, crushing the waffle beneath? I'm also told that syrup is usually involved in this dish too, which confuses me even more, because it would make the chicken harder to pick up and eat.

In a bold, unexpected, psychological attack, maple-syrup-hater Tasha sent me a link to a bunch of non-traditional waffle recipes, many of which cross firmly into "dinner" territory. Like chili topping a cornbread waffle, for example. At first I was appalled by the concept, but as I scrolled through the list, a couple of recipes actually appealed to me. What does that mean?

After more thought than I probably should have devoted to this topic, I've come to the conclusion that my issue isn't with savory waffles, per se. It's with dinner waffles. Waffles are a breakfast thing. Like French toast or croissants. This ham and cheese waffle makes sense to me, because it can still be served at breakfast (or maybe brunch), and I'd still be within reason to dump maple syrup on it.

Those people who are monkeying around with waffles for dinner... well, I contend that once you're making them out of cornbread and putting chili on them or using them as the bread layer of a BLT sandwich, they're really "waffles" in name only. It's like if someone made curry French toast. Ok, so maybe it's technically French toast, but it's so far from what we know and love as French toast that they probably should have given it another name entirely. But what do I know? I prefer pancakes anyway.



*Picard. By a mile.

Montreal Bagels

Since it's a trip home and not really a vacation, you wouldn't think I'd bring home many souvenirs for myself when I visit Montreal. Usually, this is true, but this time I had a moment of bready weakness and brought back dozens of fresh bagels. 

Explain to me how anyone can walk into a place like this and not leave with as many bagels as they could carry. I'm grateful they didn't have shopping carts, or I may have bought more. The staff was very understanding of my need to take pictures of their bagel oven. Apparently they get that all the time. See those long flat boards? They use those to get the bagels into and out of the oven, and they slide the hot golden bagels off the boards  into the big bin you see on the right, where they get scooped out and put by the dozen into paper bags for the customers waiting in line.

Brossard Bagel, in Greenfield Park, QC

One dozen of the delicious bagels I imported were to share with my coworkers, because I thought it would be a welcome change from the boxes of saltwater taffy that always appear in the break room whenever someone gets back from vacation. Also, we're a pretty seriously carbohydrate-loving group.

I sent out an excited "OMG you guys!! Montreal bagels for everyone!!" e-mail and then spent the rest of the morning trying to answer "what's a Montreal bagel?" And that's a difficult question. All I know is that they're dense, they're delicious, and I can't find anything like them around here.

So, in the interest of educating the world, I acquired different types of bagels so that I could proceed with: 

A Comparative Anatomy of Bagels

 

I started with one sesame bagel from Brossard Bagel, and one poppyseed bagel from Wegmans. I was going to get one from Panera, but I was grocery shopping anyway, and the Wegmans ones looked exactly like the Panera ones I'm used to, so I think it's a good example of a generic "bagel" available in this area. I specifically did not buy the packaged Thomas Bagels in the bread aisle, because I wanted to compare a fresh-baked Montreal bagel with a fresh-baked generic bagel from this area. The guy at the counter at Wegmans assured me that they bake them fresh, so we're on more or less even ground there.

First, let's have a look at them.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel.

The first thing that you notice is that the Wegman's bagel looks a lot bigger than the one from Montreal. It's taller, and while it's about the same diameter, it has a much smaller center hole, making it look a lot less dense. But is it less dense?

Here's a look at the insides.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel

They both show evidence of bubbles inside, but the ones in the Wegmans bagel are bigger. This doesn't necessarily mean it's less dense, but I noticed a big difference in texture just by poking them. The Wegmans bagel is much, much more squashable.

I crushed the bagels with my girly pink dumbbells to demonstrate the squash factor. Using a 5-pound weight on each bagel eliminates the possibility of me pushing harder on one or the other.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel

As you can see, the one on the left barely deforms at all, and the one on the right looks like a Tempur-Pedic commercial. I'm going to let this stand as my test of bagel density, because calculating bagel volume is a little too intense a task for me, and I'm not in the mood for math.

I told my coworker that I was doing a bagel experiment, and she generously offered to get me a couple of bagels from a Jewish bakery in her neighborhood, to give me a third data point. Fantastic!

I didn't squash the bagel from the Jewish bakery, because I was too excited about jamming it into the toaster so I could eat it, but I did take a photo of its insides for you.

Bagel from Jewish bakery

It looked very much like the Wegmans bagel, both inside and out. It was fat and fluffy-looking, and it had many large bubbles inside. The biggest difference was the smell - much more yeasty than the Wegmans bagel. I also noticed that the texture was denser, but not as dense as the Montreal bagel. Many of the little holes had doughy threads across them, making me think there's a lot of gluten in this bread.

The Taste Test

I toasted the bagels in my cheap two-slice toaster, and then tasted them both with butter and plain cream cheese. I also tried the bagel from the Jewish bakery with some veggie cream cheese, which is a specialty of that deli. It seemed like the right thing to do. The bagels were tested at least a half hour apart. I am so very very full of carbohydrates.

Wegmans bagel

It got crunchy on the outside, and remained very soft and bready on the inside. It felt like it took a long time to gain any brown color. Where I cut the toasted bagel in half, the knife flattened the bagel completely. It tasted bland, vaguely yeasty, like a big soft chunk of white bread. No dominating taste or smell. Not entirely different from a dinner roll.

Montreal bagel

Much more difficult to cut in half because of its density, so my halves were uneven. If ever there was an appropriate time for those safety bagel cutter things, it's with Montreal bagels. It turned brown much more quickly than the first bagel. The Montreal bagel had a much sweeter taste, and I posit that the higher sugar content led to faster browning. Incredibly chewy, with a crunchy crust. Coworkers commented on the sweetness of the bagels I brought in, and how chewy they were.

Jewish bagel

Its browning speed fell somewhere between the other two. The smell and the taste were very yeasty, and it was chewier than the Wegmans bagel by far, which surprised me given how similar they look. It was nowhere near as dense and chewy as the Montreal bagel, though, so although it was good it didn't win my taste test. Yes, I'm biased. I admit it.

So why are Montreal bagels so dense? I'm not sure. Wikipedia has the following to say about how Montreal bagels differ from the "generic bagel":

• The bagel dough includes egg and honey.
• Honey is also added to the water used for poaching the bagels before baking.
• The bagels are baked in a wood-fired oven. 

All these things make them so much more delicious than any other type of bagel I've ever tried. I don't know why they haven't spread out and become more popular across Canada and the United States - you'd think the sweetness would be a great selling point. There are some recipes I've found online for "Montreal-style bagels", and one of these days I may give that a shot, but for now, I have dozens of frozen bagels to tide me over.

Oh, before I close this out, I have one more reason why Montreal bagels are better. Check this out, from the same Wikipedia article:

Montreal-style bagels are currently the only style of bagel to have ventured into in space. Gregory Chamitoff, who grew up in Montreal, took three bags of sesame bagels with him on his assignments to STS-124 as passenger and ISS Expedition 17 as crewmember.

That's right. I thought I was a hardcore fan because I dragged dozens across the border in my Honda Fit, and here I learn this guy brought them to space. We loves our bagels, what can I say.

Round or Folded?

"Round or folded?"

The guy at the drive-through window repeated his question, since we were still staring blankly at him.

"Your egg. Do you want it round, or folded?"

Dave and I looked at each other. Both of us had eyebrows raised and shoulders lifted slightly to indicate that we had no idea what in hell the guy was talking about, so Dave bravely took initiative, turned back to the impatient McDonald's employee, and declared:

"Round."

We got home and spread out our breakfast goodies on the counter so we could see what consequences we'd now have to endure, and luckily our orders had resulted in one egg in each style, so we could compare them. The sausage and egg McMuffin, on the right, was the bearer of the round egg in question. The bacon, egg, and cheese McGriddle, on the left, features the mysterious folded egg.

Round eggs are regular old eggs, cooked in round kajiggers like these:

Blue silicone egg kajiggers

Folded eggs, meanwhile, are made from the egg-like goo that all fast food restaurants now use in place of scrambled eggs. Pre-scrambled for efficiency, I guess, but even though they're made from actual eggs, I never feel like the texture is right, and I wish they'd never been invented.

Powdered eggs, AKA the Cheez-Whiz of eggs

This stuff is why I have to pointedly ask for "shell eggs" when I order scrambled eggs at diners. Otherwise what I get is nasty, uniformly bright yellow, and spongy.

But the McDonald's experience opened my eyes to another way of making DIY breakfast sandwiches. I've always tried making a round-ish fried egg to put into an english muffin, with varying success. The egg often turns out too wide, and requires minor surgery to keep from poking out of the muffin. I had hoped that using the egg kajiggers would help, and I was very excited when I first opened the box they came in, but they got squashed in shipping and the now best I can manage with them are elliptical fried eggs. While I am entertained by the thought of eating conical sections for breakfast, the problem of fitting egg to muffin remains.

Enter the folded egg. I don't have a flat griddle or a square mold to contain liquid egg, but I took a shot and scrambled an egg and poured it into a frying pan, spreading it out like I do with crepe batter. As thin as it was, it cooked quickly, and I had it done and folded up on the english muffin within two minutes. And it fit on the muffin, with only little bits of its corners sticking out!

Sorry, round egg. Your day is over in my house. I've moved on.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

I'm guilty of piling up dozens of "to try" recipes on Pinterest, and never getting around to actually trying them. Recently, re-pinning a chicken recipe led me to a great Canadian cooking blog called Rock Recipes, which I have since bookmarked, because I want to try so many of their ideas. 

I was in the mood for muffins, so I searched their recipe archive to see what I could work with, and their Caramel Apple Muffins seemed like a good bet, even without the caramel part. I added more apples than called for, since I was skipping the caramels, and I think these turned out so great.

Get your dry ingredients mixed together:

2 1/2 cups flour

1/4 cup white sugar

4 tsp baking powder

2tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

Then do the same with your wet ingredients:

1/3 cup sour cream

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup milk

2 eggs

1tsp vanilla

Then add the wet to the dry and mix it all up until you've got a nice lumpy batter.

Peel and chop three apples - this recipe is a good way to use up older, softer-than-usual apples. Then, and this is where I tweaked the recipe, toss the apple bits with a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and a dash of cinnamon so they're well coated. There's not much sugar in this recipe, so adding more here doesn't hurt. Fold the sweet apples into the batter.

Bake them in greased muffin tins at 350F for about 20-25 minutes. Depending how big you make your muffins, you'll end up with 12-15 muffins.

They were fluffy and not too sweet, just cinnamony enough, and very good with a cup of coffee for a quick breakfast.

Crêpes

Crêpes were always a Christmas morning tradition with my family, either at home or at Grandmaman's house. We woke up too late this Christmas to bother with breakfast, since we were off for a huge feast at my in-laws in the afternoon, so I shifted crêpe day to New Year's Day instead. A great start to the year, I think!

Crêpes

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1 1/2 cups flour

2 cups milk

1 tsp soft butter

(Makes approximately 8 large crepes)

Beat the eggs with the soft butter, sugar, and salt, until they're frothy. Add milk and keep beating. Using a whisk is usually best. Add the flour and beat out the lumps, but it's ok if you've got small lumps, it won't matter. Keep the batter cold. This is very important. I usually leave an ice cube or two in the bowl of batter, especially if it's going to sit a few minutes before it goes into the pan.

Heat your pan with butter and a little oil (canola, vegetable, whatever you have handy) and wait till it's hot enough to make a drop of water sizzle. Drop a ladle full of batter into the center of the pan and tip and swirl the pan to coat the whole surface. When the edges of the crêpe curl and brown, shake the pan. If the crêpe moves freely, it's ready to flip. Shake it so it's hanging out of the pan a little on one edge, then slide a spatula under it to help you flip it. If you have mad kitchen skills and think you can flip it with a flick of your wrist, feel free, but I can never make that work.

This is what it should look like when you flip it:

Once flipped, cook the other side for 30 seconds to one minute, then transfer (slide) to a plate.

These are savory crêpes, not sweet dessert ones. Normally I cover them with a thin sprinkling of brown sugar, then roll them up and drizzle maple syrup over them, and they really don't need to be any further improved. You could also put ham and cheese or any other savory fillings in them - after flipping the crêpe, lay some cheese and whatever else you want on one half of the crepe and then flip the other half over it. Instant filled crêpe.

While you do not need a fancy crêpe pan to make crepes, I do recommend getting one if you're going to make crêpes with any regularity. Flipping them is much simpler with a special pan because of the low edges, and I find the heat is very even, at least in the one I have. Look for one that's about 10 inches across and has a very shallow lip. You don't need a "crêpe spreader" tool, just tipping the pan is plenty to get the batter spread out. If you're using a normal frying pan, you will be fine, but it may be trickier to get a spatula underneath the crêpe to flip it.

DIY Egg McMuffinish things

We're leaving before the sun even considers coming up tomorrow and won't really have time to think about breakfast before we have to hit the road. I know I'm never happy with just a granola bar, and stopping for fast food breakfast costs money and takes time. So tonight, I took a few minutes and I made a yummy reheatable breakfast for tomorrow!

It's the easiest thing ever - just English Muffins, eggs, ham, and cheese. It's best with nice sharp cheddar, but I only had Kraft singles on hand, which is why you see that unnatural yellow layer in my sandwiches. I fry the eggs, trying very hard to keep them restricted to a small round footprint in the frying pan so they won't flop over the sides of the English muffins later. I assume it's much easier with a silicone egg-ring, but I haven't gotten around to buying one yet since I don't make these often. I sprinkle them with salt and pepper as they cook and then I plop them onto English muffin halves. I added a few ham slices and a slice of cheese, and stuck them into a plastic container in the fridge for tomorrow morning. They only need about 25-30 seconds in the microwave to get melty and delicious.

When I'm making them for immediate eating, I heat up the ham in the pan while the egg cooks beside it, and then layer it on top. I put the cheese on top of that and let it melt a tiny bit before transferring the whole thing to an English muffin. That way everything is melty and delicious without the need for a turn in the microwave.