Bialys from the Bakehouse – Tuesday, March 3
A terrific traditional taste of Eastern Europe and the Lower East
Even 43 remarkable years after opening the Deli, bialys are still mostly a mystery to folks here in Ann Arbor. While bagels long ago went mainstream and have been showing up in supermarkets, freezers, and fast-food places for decades, bialys are, to this day, still pretty much a secret. Me, I’m a big bialy fan!
If you aren’t familiar with them, bialys are the traditional “roll” of the Polish town of Bialystok—about a nine-hour drive in the 21st century, south and west from Ostrovno. They were brought to this country primarily by Polish-Jewish bakers around the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century as well. Back then, they were very much an everyday bread, eaten at almost every meal. In New York today, they’re still readily available, but out here in the rest of the country, a bialy (let alone a good bialy) isn’t something you’ll find every day. Most Americans will go their whole lives without ever having eaten one!
John Thorne, in his wonderful book, Simple Cooking, wrote that a bialy is
a bagel that’s lost inside a Polish joke: its outside is crusty instead of glossy and the hole in the center doesn’t make it all the way through. But, fresh from the oven, it is a delicacy unique to itself, crisp and chew at once, the center dimple stuffed with translucent onion bits …
More directly, with a bialy, the “hole” in the center isn’t really a hole; it’s more of an indentation, a thumbprint of an impression, which is filled with lots of fresh, diced onions and plenty of poppy seeds. Since a bialy isn’t boiled before being baked, it doesn’t have as thick a crust.
You can do a lot of the same things with a bialy as you would with a bagel. Eat ’em out of hand or, alternatively, try them toasted with a little Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter or Zingerman’s Cream Cheese and some smoked salmon. Having read Mimi Sheraton’s very lovely little book, The Bialy Eaters, I learned that back in Bialystok, people generally ate bialys by simply spreading butter across the top, not slicing them in half as we do with bagels. They’re even better if you warm them in the oven for a few minutes before you eat ‘em.
You can only buy bialys at the Bakehouse once a month. In March, that’s this coming Tuesday, the 3rd. They do freeze just fine, so you can store them up at home to have on hand for …well, for any time you feel like a bialy.
Save you six?
