- This place is all talk.
You can't have fries without ketchup.
The ketchup is inside the fries!
(scoffs)
- This cream cheese in this pizza bagel,
it adds a whole other level of flavor.
And with pizza on a bagel, you can eat pizza any time!
- Hey, what's up guys.
Welcome back to Binging with Babish.
For this week we seek to elevate the widely beloved
but often humble pizza bagel and fries
into some inventive cartoon hoked cuisine.
First thing we got to do is make bagels
which we did on the previous Steven Universe episode
but I've learned a couple tips and tricks since then.
We're starting by making a sponge
out of 250 grams of bread flour,
one teaspoon active dry yeast
and 350 grams of room temperature water
which we're gonna mix into a paste,
cover and let sit at room temperature
for at least four hours, up to overnight
if you really wanna develop your bagels flavor.
You should see some big awesome bubbles
and a nice webby network of gluten beginning to form.
To this we're gonna add 25 grams of marley--
Marley bolt syrup?
Barley malt syrup,
450 more grams of bread flour,
and 10 grams of kosher salt.
Affix dough hooks and knead for 10 full minutes.
If you want slightly softer, less chewy bagels,
better for sandwiches
shoot for more like four or five minutes.
Either way we should be met
with a soft, silky, springy dough
that we're going to form into a ball
and place back in the bowl,
covering and letting proof at room temperature for one hour.
The dough should poof up a little bit
but not quite double in size.
This shows that our yeast is still alive and well
and that our dough is ready for division and shaping.
One shortcoming of the Steven Universe bagels
is that they were hilariously small.
So I'm doubling the size of the portions
into pieces that weigh 130 grams
from which we should yield eight bagel balls
which we're going to cover with a moistened towel
and let rest at room temperature for another 30 minutes.
Just enough time to let our gluten relax
so that we can form our balls into bagels
without them tearing.
You could roll out and twist your bagels, New York style.
But I like to just punch a hole in the center with my thumbs
and widen the whole thing into a bagel
using two spinning fingers.
It's important to make the hole a little bigger
than you think that it needs to be.
These guys are going to puff up a lot
and like an untended ear piercing,
they could close completely if you're not careful.
Rinse and repeat with the remaining bagels.
And since there's a bunch left,
this is a great opportunity to introduce Kendall Beach,
our new kitchen producer.
After all it's like I always say,
"Forming bagels is a team sport."
Yes, of course I always say that.
Why would I make something like that up?
After a little Hollywood handshake
we are generously oiling some plastic wrap
and using it to cover the bagels
which we're going to fridge for at least 24 hours.
Ideally up to 72.
Plenty of time to begin the equally arduous process
of making French fries.
But not just any French fries.
We're doing a modification of Chef Steps modification
of Heston Blumenthal's justifiably famous
triple cooked chips.
First we are peeling and cutting
one kilogram of russet potatoes
into giant ass French fries.
Keeping everybody hanging out in cool water
because russets are full of starch
and storing them in the water
is not only going to remove some of the starch,
it's gonna keep the potatoes from discoloring.
Next up, we're making a brine
in which we're going to cook our potatoes.
One liter of water, 15 grams of kosher salt
and 10 grams of glucose syrup.
If you don't happen to have glucose syrup lying around,
you can substitute with 10 grams of granulated sugar.
We're also adding two and a half grams of baking soda
which is going to raise the pH level of the fries
and help them brown.
Mix everybody together until homogenous.
And then we are very carefully combining half the fries
and half the brine in a vac sealed bag.
Turning our vac sealer into an arcade game
that we have to hit stop on
before it sucks water into the mechanism
and destroys your day.
Ultimately, you could just put these in a heat-safe
zip top bag and suck out all the air you can
with a straw before sealing and introducing
to a 195 degree Fahrenheit sous vide bath.
This just below boiling bath
is going to gently and evenly cook
our potatoes for 20 minutes.
During which time they should cook
to the point of almost falling apart
and becoming very easy to crush
betwixt two gloved fingers.
So now we're going to very carefully drain these guys
and adjust focus on our lens
so we can examine them up close.
They should have a lightly roughed up texture
and should be extraordinarily fragile.
So now we're going to very carefully
lay them out on a wire rack,
set in a rimed baking sheet
making sure that they do not touch
and we're gonna place them in the freezer
for about 30 minutes
which is going to help drive off excess moisture.
Then straight out the freezer,
they're going into some peanut oil,
heated to 260 degrees Fahrenheit
for anywhere from five to eight minutes
until they are just starting
to turn blonde around the edges.
Rinse and repeat with the rest of the fries
in small batches,
both so they don't touch
and also, so they don't lower the temperature
of the frying oil every time you plop them in.
Back onto the wire rack and into the freezer they go
for at least two hours, ideally overnight.
A few days later and we're ready to finish what we started.
These bagels have been in the fridge for 72 hours
and before they can be baked,
they must first be boiled
in a combination of a gallon of water,
one tablespoon marley bolt syrup,
and one teaspoon of baking soda.
Once a boil is reached,
straight out the fridge and into the water go our bagels
for 20 seconds on each side.
Then we're placing them on a lightly greased wire rack
set in a rimmed baking sheet
and baking in a preheated 425 degree Fahrenheit oven
where they're going to bake for 20 to 25 minutes total.
After about 15 minutes
you're going to start seeing
some spotty browning on the outside of your bagels.
Fear not we're going to give them a flip
and place them in back in the oven
for another five to 10 minutes
until they're evenly browned all over.
And you're going to see
because of the long ferment in the fridge,
we have an absolutely crackling, blistered crust
on the outside of our bagels.
This is because of the yeast
slowly producing CO2 in the cold of the fridge.
Giving us both an improved flavor and texture.
Ow, my fingers.
Also, if you wants a more pronounced--
Whoa.
If you want a more pronounced a bagel hole
make sure that you give them an extra stretch
before they head into the water.
Set those aside to cool
because it's time to finish up our fries
which we're going to do in a positively decadent medium.
About two quarts of duck fat
heated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
carefully lower in the par fried potatoes
and let them fry for between two to five minutes
until they are deeply, shatteringly golden brown and crisp.
The brine, sous vide, freeze, cook, freeze
and cook again method has rewarded us
with a fry that has a glassy crisp exterior
and an impossibly light and fluffy interior
despite the fries size.
Why did we make fries so big?
Because well, it's time to inject them with ketchup
which we're going to do by virtue
of a giant scary barbecue needle filled with ketchup.
Slightly warm ketchup so that we don't cool off
the interiors of our fries too much.
We're going to start by inserting the needle
the full length of the fry
and slowly pull it out whilst depressing the plunger
and impregnating our fries with--
This all sounds kinda wrong.
I dunno, we're filling the fries
with ketchup with a long needle.
And then to Steven Universify our bagel,
we're first going to slice it in half
and then perform a ritual
that sandwich shops refer to as scooping
or the act of quite literally scooping out
the interiors of the bagel to make room
for our cream cheese that we're going to pipe
into the now vacant cavity of our once bready bagel.
Spread it smooth so nobody knows
that it's in there when served,
and then we're going to top it
with a generous layer of a lightly cooked
San Marzano tomato sauce,
obscuring our smeary surprise
and giving us a platform upon which
we can arrange some little pieces
of fresh mozzarella cheese.
These were kind of scattered around in various dots and Xs.
So that's what I'm going to emulate here.
And because the idea of a cold pizza bagel
is the stuff of nightmares,
bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for five to 10 minutes.
Then we are topping with a smattering
of chopped, fresh basil.
Just enough to give a little flavor and visual variety
and arranging on a plate with a couple fresh basil leaves.
Then it's time to start arranging
our ketchup injected French fries
in a rarely seen French fry starburst pattern.
Garnish with a single sprig of fresh parsley.
And there you have it.
Stevens chefy, more than meets the eye interpretations
of the two beach city favorites.
First up the French fries.
And to be honest, I thought injecting them with ketchup
was going to totally ruin their texture
but it actually worked out pretty well.
The inside stayed nice and fluffy
and the outside nice and crisp
with a little channel of ketchup
running right through the center.
The cream cheese pizza bagel
was another surprising success.
I thought I wasn't gonna like it.
I am what you might call a pizza bagel purist.
But the addition of cream cheese
added a kind of brunchy vibe to the bagel
and earned it a spot in the Clean Plate Club,
which is great because these pizza bagels
and these fries took three days
and almost a hundred dollars to make.
But even after all that,
I found myself craving a real deal pizza bagel.
Mini bagels, sauced and cheesed
and broiled with tiny little cubes of pepperoni.
You might've seen on Instagram
that I'm thinking about starting a bagel truck next year
and these little guys definitely are going on the menu.
♪ Won't you pick the pieces up ♪
♪ Cause it feels just like I'm walking on broken glass ♪
♪ Walking on, walking on broken glass ♪
♪ The sun's still shining in the big blue sky ♪