How My Bagels Triggered The Sexist In Me.

So, finally, I am in a position to share the recipe I’ve been using to make my bagels. More specifically, to reliably make my bagels. The test with any good recipe is its replicability, after all. It has been a long, arduous, labor-intensive, but altogether joyous journey. I’d like to say the best part is eating the bagels, but to be honest, I think the best part is seeing how beautiful they come out of the oven, knowing that I did that!

Is that a joy that other people feel? Do you feel that every time you bake the perfect loaf of bread, the most delectable slice of chocolate cake, the most beautiful bowl of japchae? I confess, my propensity to derive so much pleasure at the mere sight of a perfectly proofed dome of dough is not something I would have predicted for myself back when I was lawyering. Still, I am competitive by nature and, for better or worse, feel loved (and thus self-loved) through achievement. So, I suppose whether it’s winning on summary judgment, crossing the finish line of a marathon, or baking up what my husband calls “your best batch yet!”, it all comes from the same place.

Like anything else, the reward is a function of its cost. The easier it is to produce something, the less meaningful its successful production. Part of the reason the sight of 10 perfectly blistered, risen bagels elates me to such an excessive degree is because I’ve made so many ugly, deflated bagels in the process. Those were so demoralizing—it takes me about 36 to 40 hours to make just 10 bagels, so if they turn out bad, it’s back to the drawing board with another 2 days to see if I can correct my mis-steps. I’m an instant gratification kinda gal, so this has also taught me a lesson in patience.

In filming the video for the bagel recipe, I wanted to capture a photo of a bagel baked after 24 hours, 36 hours, and 48 hours in the fridge. This was tricky, since I would either have to be baking very early in the morning or very late at night for one of these bagels. I decided to go with very early in the morning for the 36-hour proofed bagel. I woke up at 4:30 am, boiled just one bagel, and stuck it in the oven. It came out perfectly—a lovely, tight ring with plenty of height, its glorious amber face covered in freckles.

I pulled it apart on camera to reveal its tender, chewy flesh, and was rewarded with a crackle so pure and splendid so as to rival any sound produced by Bach. I posted the video on my Instagram stories the same way a little kid runs to her best friends to show them some really cool, new trick she’s mastered on her brand new two-wheeler. Hey guys look, look! Look what I can do!!! It was now 5 in the morning and yes, I was exhilarated because that is what a perfect bagel can do when it is the product of months of researching, Reddit-ing, making mistakes, trying new things, buying things called “bagel boards,” writing and rewriting your ingredient ratios, shaping dough at 10:30 at night, waking up at 4:30 in the morning to bake said dough, and eating literally dozens and dozens and dozens of excellent and not-so-excellent rings of bread.

The thing I love about social media is that I can reach literally millions of people who will be just as excited as I am about hunks of dough. They too will understand the joys of bagel perfection, as well as the humiliation of bagel deflation. I’ve received hundreds of comments and requests for this recipe along the way, so many who have encouraged me through the many errors of my trial and error adventure, as well as the simple but effective “drool emoji” 🤤 in my DMs. But that morning, at around 5:15 am, after I shared a video of myself pulling apart a still steaming bagel, I received the following message:

“O sweetie. Get a manicure.”

Even writing those words above brings with it a certain…ugliness. The faint taste of something rancid in my mouth. The fact that this comment came from a woman made it so much worse. I was at once embarrassed, ashamed, painfully self-conscious, a little hurt, and finally angry. It’s the same feeling I would get when I ran over to my mother to show her something so freaking cool I picked up off the ground on my walk home from the bus stop—a strange looking flower, a really smooth rock, a gray feather—and she’d tell me, Your socks are dirty! I told you not to wear those slippers outside.

I didn’t think to check my nails at 4:30 in the morning. I washed my hands as is my habit anytime I’m in the kitchen, but beyond that, I gave zero thought to whether my nails looked “presentable” for a 15 second clip of me enthusiastically digging into my perfect bagel. Indeed, I haven’t gotten a manicure in many months. Partly because I hate how much time it takes out of my day (it’s at least 2 hours if not longer) and partly because I’m in the process of writing my book. My manuscript is due (hard, non-negotiable deadline) in just a few weeks, and manicures make it much harder for me to type. So, in lieu of going to the nail salon, I simply trimmed them myself. Did I bother to shape them and make them look professional? No. Because I don’t care about how they look so much as how many words per minute I can type.

I shouldn’t have to share any of this explanation with anyone. I was not making these bagels to sell on the street. I made them to enjoy at home. I didn’t do a professional photo shoot with my hands and these bagels for my cookbook or even my blog or even this email. I didn’t make the video for my website. I made it as an available for only 24-hours clip of my “in-that-moment-joy” for others to feel.

And yet a fellow woman felt compelled to chastise me for not having perfectly manicured fingernails when doing so.

I think in her own, insensitive way, she was trying to be helpful, in the same way my parents were trying to be helpful right after college when they told me I was too overweight to visit Korea. I’m sure that’s the story she’s told herself. But it wasn’t helpful. It was hurtful, unkind, and dare I say, sexist. Because if my husband had gotten up at 4:30 in the morning to bake the perfect bagel just so that he could show people what it looks like after a 36-hour proof and then shared it, proudly, on his Instagram stories, despite his very BUSTED up piano-playing fingernails (which haven’t seen a manicurist once in his entire living life), not a SINGLE PERSON would have said:

“O sweetie. Get a manicure.”

I know it seems like a small thing; but, whether it’s the mean comment about the cellulite on my legs, the constant “why do you look so tired?” when I don’t wear makeup, or the questions about why my belly jiggles when I run (I’ve received all of these), over a lifetime, these little nudges, pin-pricks, swipes to get you back in line—they add up to something sinister and overwhelming. Because as I said, I didn’t just feel angry. In fact, anger was the final emotion I felt. The first one? Shame. A part of me agreed: how dare I try to make bagels without getting a manicure first?

How effed up is that?

Not all of my weekly essay make it onto the website. Subscribe to get my Tuesday Musings delivered directly to your inbox. 

Since we’re speaking about bagels, one specific “bagel” memory sticks out to me more than any other. This one has nothing to do with bagels I made.

A few years ago, I was on vacation with a group of friends. We rented a couple cabins on the lake and every day, one of us provided breakfast. One morning, someone brought in a platter of bagels. My friend had brought her kids with her and her middle daughter, who was not even 9 years old yet, picked out a bagel and told her mom, I’m going to have a bagel for breakfast because I don’t want to get fat. Without missing a beat, her mother replied, That bagel will make you fatter than a piece of sausage will.

The instant deflation on the little girl’s face is seared into my brain. Because that entire exchange? It had the feel of something practiced, something worn, something done many many times before. I wanted to yell at her mom, eat 15 bagels right then and there as big “fuck you,” take the girl aside and tell her a million times over that “getting fat” should be the furthest thing from her mind while in a freaking cabin on the lake surrounded by family and friends and kayaks and pontoons. But I didn’t because I felt “it wasn’t my place” to correct her mother in front of everyone. I did, however, spend some quality time with the young girl, made some of my famous Korean twisty donuts the next day for everyone (including her mom), and tried to show her that food isn’t the devil. No, no, the devil resides somewhere else altogether.

But isn’t it strange? Isn’t it scary… how slyly the devil slips in between the cracks and shames us before we even recognize his horns?

I don’t think shame is always a terrible thing. I should be ashamed if I am mean. I should be ashamed if I steal. I should be ashamed if I cheat. But shame is such a potent tool for regulating unwanted behavior, that it has been weaponized by those in power to keep their power. It works like a pyramid scheme, with the overwhelming majority of the wealth being funneled up to the person sitting right at the top, while his minions defraud those beneath him for a fraction of the loot. I think that is what hurt the most. Girl-to-girl, woman-to-woman, I hated that my friend was teaching her daughter to fear food, to fear her own body. I hated that a woman told me to do the same in my DMs.

And I hated that for even one solitary second, I listened to her.

Ok, so before I share the recipe for the bagels I’ve been making non-stop for the past three months, I want to preface it by saying this isn’t my recipe. I’ll link to the recipe I use as my “base” (though I have tweaked it), but if you are at all already familiar with bagel making, then you’ll know that someone claiming to have the “best recipe for bagels” is a little like saying they have the “best recipe for making rice.” Bagels have been made for centuries. There are probably hundreds of thousands of different iterations of bagel-making, so it is statistically unlikely that anyone’s basic bagel recipe is going to be original enough to qualify as proprietary.

I am, by no means, an expert at bagel making. I am, however, really good at explaining complicated things. Sometimes I apply that skill to the law. Sometimes I apply it to kimchi. And today, I am applying it to bagel making. After doing all the research, I’ve tried to explain the process in a way that is easy to follow for the beginner, because, not too long ago, I was also a beginner. Think of it like reading an article on how to DIY your own panel moulding or change a flat tire. There may be a few tricks or “hacks” that seem innovative, but the basic process is universal.

Nor do I have it all figured out. These bagels aren’t perfect. My oven is wonky, and therefore, the ones sitting on the left tend to burn more than those on the right. I want to maximize their height (which I’ve done), but I also would prefer them to have a harder crust. While the shaping is FAR improved, they are still far from uniform, so I know I have lots or practice in my future. But, here’s the thing—these bagels are still the best bagels I’ve ever made in my life and I would stack them, toe-to-toe, with the ones I’ve gotten at the seediest delis in Brooklyn. And thus, what I want you to feel walking away from the blog post is this:

Oh! If she can make them? I can make them too!

Why am I saying all this? Because, as I talk about in my blog post, bagels have a deep cultural significance to many—in much the same way that kimchi does for Korean people. While I did not set out to perfect the “authentic bagel,” I want to share what I’ve learned in a way that respects the stories that have led to our collective enjoyment of this yeasted bread, wherever you are. This is not my recipe for bagels. It is merely a very florid description of the journey I took to arrive at a bagel that tastes as close as possible to the brown, crusty, chewy rings of glory I can usually only find when I’m in New York.

Until now.

And thus, without further ado…

Last week, I had the pleasure of moderating a book chat with my friend, Matt Broussard, over at NowServingLA. Matt just debuted his cookbook, Now We’re Cooking, and it was my job to elicit all the “good info” on the book his fans had already purchased for a ticket to the event. While flipping through it, I saw a photo of a post-it with the following handwritten words:

“My dear grandson, forge your own path. Anything is possible.”

Apparently, it was a note Matt’s grandmother had snuck into his luggage when he left his entire life and family behind in Texas to pursue a dream job in Seattle. He was sitting on the floor of a bedbug infested apartment with only $500 to his name when he discovered this missive from “Grand” buried in some clothes. I joked that I’d had a very different sentiment expressed to me by my own parents when I told them I was going to leave the law to pursue writing and everyone laughed.

When I asked him what it felt like to read that note from his grandmother in the middle of night, alone in a city he didn’t know, with no one but bedbugs for company, he smiled beatifically and said,

“My grandmother always told me I could do anything, be anything. So, even with the bedbugs and sitting on the floor of that apartment, I knew it would all work out. Because Grand said it would.”

I’ve done about 30 book chats for cookbook authors, memoirists, content creators, friends, and A-list celebrities. Very rarely do they say something that gives me pause.

This time, though… I paused.

I stared out at the folks sitting in front of us in the small, black fold-up chairs that NowServing likes to use for these intimate book chats. Then I looked up at the ceiling, because I was afraid I might start to cry in front of them. I was wondering in my head,

Man… how different would I be if I’d had someone say something like that to me, all my life?

Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I’m well aware of all I’ve accomplished in my own life and am grateful for parents who sacrificed more than I can describe in an email to make sure I never wanted for food, clothes, shelter, and a top-notch education. But the fact that they were so against me leaving the law—even after I’d devoted 18 years of my life to that career, had secured a book deal, and saved up a year’s worth of living expenses in case things went south—speaks to how much their fear outweighed their faith.

Matt is fearless and I envied that.

Fear and shame are both powerful motivators—my life is a testament to that. But I wondered while sitting there next to my friend Matt what it would feel like to live, even one day, propelled by joy and faith.

Perhaps the answer lies inside the ring of a perfectly proofed bagel.

Wishing you all the best,
-Joanne

Questions and Comments