Savory & Sweet Saturdays: Sourdough Bagels

Moving to the deep northern woods of Michigan to try our hand at homesteading conjured an intense need inside of me to make bread. Not just any bread, but sourdough. The pandemic seemed to call to many of us to make our own bread. Partly due to food supply shortages, but I think more to return to our ancestral roots and reconnect with our symbiosis with food.

There is something truly meditative in the act of making bread. Especially sourdough. Cultivating a colony of yeasts that seemingly, like magic, raises our dough and produces this tangy and satisfying loaf. Bread has been a keystone in all cultures around the world. To “break bread” is to connect. To feed my family something made by my hands that nourishes them is a satisfaction rarely found in other activities.

Bread brings us together. When I pull a hot loaf from the oven, we all seem to leave our private spaces and converge on the kitchen to taste. Nothing teases my boys from coming out of their bedrooms better than my sourdough bagels on a Sunday morning. I wake early and find delight in discovering my blob of dough has risen nearly to the tops of my bowls. I turn on some chill music and portion out my dough. Boiling the bagels is a meditative production line of boiling pots and timers. And then, about ten minutes into the bagels baking in the oven, the smell fills the whole house, and I begin to hear footsteps growing near the kitchen. Our favorites: sesame seed, everything, and Asiago. No matter how many batches I make, they never last long around here.

My favorite recipe that has never failed me comes from Little Spoon Farm. It is fool-proof and delicious.