What's the Deal with... the Bialy

You know that thing? That thing popping up on menus everywhere, but you don’t quite know what it is? And it sounds like something you should already know about, so you don’t really want to ask? Well, we know about it, and we’ll give you the intel. Welcome to What’s the Deal with.

High Street on Market’s squid ink bialy. Photo credit: Jason Varney

Click on this link. That’s generally what you get when you order a bagel these days.

“Bagels in general have gotten so sad,” says Eli Kulp, chef of High Street on Market in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “Even New York bagels. They’re so sugary and sweet and yeasty.” So true. And they sit in your stomach like a…bagel. That unsettled, rocky feeling is something we’ve come to associate with eating this now-universal bread product, and that just shouldn’t be.

Until this problem has been fixed, we have the bialy—the bagel’s lesser-known, but more interesting relative. “The dough is semi-soft,” says Kulp. “They’re usually around four inches in diameter, meaning you can actually finish eating an entire bun and still get up and go to work afterwards.” The flavoring comes from seeds and onions baked onto the dough; High Street on Market makes its bialy with squid ink, so the dough turns black, but that’s just them being fancy. Most bialy are white—golden when baked—and all bialy are cupped in their centers.

Where It Comes From: In the States, you can largely find bialys in New York City because of the dough’s Jewish immigrant history. But as veteran New York Timesfood writer Mimi Sheraton discovered in her book, The Bialy Eaters, these bagel-roll-things originally hail from Bialystock, Poland. Sheraton found little more than that, however, because Bialystock’s Jewish population was decimated in the Holocaust.

Defining Characteristic:  It is round with a depressed middle filled with cooked onions, and the entire thing is baked, hot and fast. It is not as easy to slice as a bagel, and this causes very uneven toasting, but don’t let that deter you.

Why It’s Catching On: Bon Appétit restaurant editor Andrew Knowlton called it one of the top trends of 2014. “You can keep that doughy, jumbo cream cheese vehicle you call a bagel. I’ll take its unsung cousin, the bialy,” he wrote. His favorites are at Alta CA in San Francisco and at High Street Market. (In fact, he called the latter’s bread program such a “superstar” that it made his recent list of Top 10 Best New Restaurants in America.)

How to Make It: Find High Street on Market head baker Alex Bois’s straightforward bialy recipe below. (In other words, no squid ink in this one.)

Bialy
by Alex Bois, Head Baker, High Street on Market
Makes one dozen

“Measure the flour by using a spoon to scoop the four from the bag and into the measuring cup, then leveling it off with the back of the knife,” says Bois. “It’s important to do it that way so you don’t cram too much flour in there, making the pastry too dense.”

DOUGH
3 cups King Arthur all-purpose flour or other medium-protein flour
1 cup room-temperature water
2 tsp. table salt or fine sea salt
4 Tbsp. sourdough starter or 1/2 tsp. yeast
Vegetable oil

TOPPING
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 red onions, diced
1 Tbsp. white sesame seeds
1 Tbsp. black sesame seeds
1 Tbsp. poppy seeds
1 Tbsp. fennel seeds
Coarse semolina flour or cornmeal flour for dusting

In the bowl of a standing mixer, whisk together the water and the starter to dissolve. Alternatively, sprinkle yeast on top of the water and let sit 5 minutes.

Combine flour and salt and then dump it on top of the water/yeast mixture. On the lowest speed, mix with a dough hook for about 6 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix on the next highest speed for another 8 minutes, or until the dough comes cleanly off the sides of the bowl and is smooth and elastic. (The dough might start to climb up the hook as you’re mixing; just pull it down and push it back into the bowl.)

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled mixing bowl with enough space for dough to expand. (It will expand to three times its size, so account for that!) Cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 4-6 hours, or overnight at a cool temperature.

Meanwhile, melt the unsalted butter in a skillet and add the onions, cooking on medium-low heat until translucent, about 6 minutes. Set aside.

Test the dough wetting your fingers and poking it. If the dough holds the indent of your fingers without rebounding significantly, then it’s ready. (“It should feel light and billowy,” says Bois.)

On a lightly floured work surface, turn out dough and divide into 12 even pieces. Lightly round each piece using floured hands, then transfer onto an oiled sheet pan. Rest the dough, oiled and covered, for another hour and a half.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 475 with either a cast iron skillet or a pizza stone inside. Fill a bowl with semolina and set aside.

After 90 minutes, when the dough is ready, remove the cover and lightly oil the surface of the rounds of dough.

With your thumb, press the center of the bialy so that you get a deep indent. Then, with oiled fingers, pick it up and, using light pressure, squeeze outwards from that indent to widen it. You should end up with a depression in center and puffy outer rims.

Dip the bottom side of each bialy into the semolina and place that finished shaped bun on a cutting board. Scatter the seeds over the bialy, then take a forkful of the onion and place it in each indent. Using your fingers, spread the onions so that they reach just before the rims.

Slide them onto skillet or pizza stone and bake for 6-8 minutes. “You want the gas bubbles on the outside to brown,” says Bois, “but the bialy should stay light golden. Serve immediately.