Sunday Morning Deli Brunch

Though my favorite bread to eat alone or with a dab of butter or cheese is French-style sourdough, there is nothing better than a good Jewish deli-style brunch, featuring bagels and rye bread.

This morning we had some old friends over—East Coast-raised Jews; serious eaters.  It was advertised as a lox and bagel meal, but while planning the meal, I remembered that these friends had expressed extreme interest several months ago when I told them about my homemade pastrami.  And I had frozen some of the pastrami.  So, in addition to bagels, I made some sour rye bread yesterday, too, and thawed and re-heated the pastrami.

I used my favorite bagel formula--the ITJB Krakowski formula, but with 25% KAF Bread Flour and 75% Sir Lancelot—but didn’t shape many of the bagels with the Krakow twist (sounds like a dance … kinda like the Warsaw watusi).  They were very pretty and quite delicious. 

Our friends brought some excellent Pacific Ocean lox (with Coho Salmon).  But the pastrami was the real hit.  And the rye bread (from Greenstein’s formula via dmsnyder) was much admired. 

It was a real deli meal right here in San Francisco, where—for all our touted food variety—one can’t find a decent deli.  Another mutual friend—one of the Philadelphia Ginsburgs--dropped by for just a few minutes and had a quick bite, swooning at the bagels and the pastrami, and then left with a bag of bagels-to-go for his family.

All agreed that it was like a taste of the Old Country.   It makes me feel like I’ve done a service for the culturally deprived.  And the best news is there’s enough left over for Pastrami and Eggs for dinner, with both bagels and rye toast!

Glenn