[Sca-cooks] Baker of Bagels in the 11th C

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

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From:  lilinah at earthlink.net   [Add to Address Book]
To: MiddleEasternPersonas at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MiddleEasternPersonas] Baker of Bagels in the 11th C
Date: Mar 30, 2009 4:08 PM

Samia al-Kaslaania wrote:
>I ran across a passing comment about a Jewish "ka'ki" or "Baker of 
>Bagels" in Vol. 2 of Goitein's _A Mediterranean Society_.
>
>Does anyone have more specific information, or recipes for 11th-12th C 
>bagels?

Generally, in the SCA-period Arabic world, ka'k are what we'd call cookies. They are made of a soft flour or semolina dough enriched with butter. Bits of the dough are formed into rings or "bracelets" (but not big enough to put your hand through :-), placed on a "baking sheet", and baked in a "bread oven" (as opposed to a tannur). They are sweet, sometimes filled with chopped nuts and sugar, and are generally not yeasted.

In bagel making, yeasted dough is made, kneaded, allowed to rise, etc.; when that process is complete, bits of dough are pulled off and formed into rings, which are then allowed to rise again; then the dough rings are boiled for some time; when they've boiled enough, they are removed and drained; and finally the bagels are baked. This is similar to medieval European bretzels (thus written in some period sources), as they were also originally boiled then baked, and soft, not hard and crunchy, although differently shaped.

There are ka'k recipes in a number of surviving SCA period Arabic language cookbooks. If you'd like, i'll post them here.

There's an interesting discussion of ka'k, bagels, bageleh (which seem to be like simit), and pretzels at:
http://www.balashon.com/2008/04/bagel.html

This discussion of ka'k on Wikipedia discusses only modern or recent types, not medieval:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka%27ak
I'll have to get around to editing that to add more historical info (yeah, i'm a wikipedian)

There's also a very interesting discussion of bagels on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagel
I need to check the SCA-Cooks list, because i know bagels have come up there...

[Disclaimer: i have not edited or contributed to either of those articles]

If there's more to Goitein's interpretation of ka'k as bagels beyond the shape, i'd love to know.

Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
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