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Welcome to the first It’s a Shanda mailbag. Thanks to everyone who sent in a question or query. I did my best to answer them below and there are more mailbags ahead (so keep your questions coming). The first answer is free to all but the full post is only available to paid subscribers. Enjoy!
“What's at the root of your concern for cornmeal? Does it represent a failure in process on the part of the baker or do you think it imparts some texture or flavor that's off-putting? And why ‘cornmeal ring of death’ (I'm quoting that from memory).” - Tom
I have a lot of preexisting food assumptions from when I was a kid that I’m still working through. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I like to tell the story about how I was working under the assumption there was only one kind of radish (the red round one) until I started shopping at West Coast farmers markets (whaddya mean radishes come in pink and white?).
Another one of those assumptions came with bagels. Sometimes when perusing the bagels at the supermarket, I would notice that their bottoms were caked in cornmeal. I knew that when I grabbed a dozen from Eli’s Hot Bagels, they certainly didn’t have that. And I didn’t remember ever seeing the cornmeal on the bottoms of any of the bagels I’d get at a good bagel shop. But if someone got store-bought bagels or picked up a dozen from a place that didn’t specialize in the bagels, the ring of cornmeal would be there. And invariably, those bagels weren’t very good.
And so, early on, I created a mental note that if you see cornmeal ringing the bottom of a bagel, it must be bad. It’s a sign that whoever made these bagels didn’t put a lot of care into it.
Hence, the Cornmeal Ring of DoomTM.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to understand the role that cornmeal plays in the bagel-making process, and how it doesn’t necessarily mean that the bagel will be bad. In fact, I’ve had plenty of good bagels that feature a CRoD. But it’s a correlation that is, no pun intended, baked into my psyche, and I’ll never not notice it.
“My wife is very particular about the source of Shabbat challah. There are several choices in Seattle. It might be interesting to consider a weekly review of challah.” - Ned
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