Bagels

So, I have been having trouble with this bagel project of mine.  For those of you that do not know, I am trying to have the pastry shoppe in town make bagels.  I think that they would make a lot of money from this endeavor.  Volunteers from all over the country have told me that they would buy bagels if they were available.  There are also many hotels and campements in the area with lots of foreigners that would buy bagels.  If the pastry shoppe makes bagels I would take orders from all the volunteers once a month and give the order to the pastry shoppe.  I would then distribute the bagels.  They would make a killing!  So here is the problem.  We tried to do bagels a few months ago.  They made a single bagel about the size of my head, and it tasted more like a donut.  Although delicious, its not a bagel.  Then I was away from site doing things like regional conferences, allvol, the donkey ride, and a number of other work related conferences.  Last week I entered the bagel shoppe with the new volunteers and I told the chef that they all wanted bagels.  As soon as I said the word “bagel”  the new volunteers immediately turned their head and started asking and being very excited about bagels.  The chef turned to me and said ok, I get it I will make bagels.  So a few days passes and I show up again and I ask about where they are.  He says that he doesn’t have the ingredients.  We look at the recipe list.  And we decide afterwards that he does have all the ingredients.  And he says in a few days to come back and he will have them.  I come back a few days later and ask where the bagels are.  He says he couldn’t do it.  I ask why.  His response is that he is unfamiliar with the unit of measurement on the list.  I look at it, and I realize that he doesn’t know what a tea spoon or a table spoon is.  This is understandable because he usually makes large orders, and I assume that he uses different units when making cakes, most likely he sticks to grams.  I tell him I will come back in a few days for the bagels he says ok.  I return a few days later very excited for bagels.  I ask him where they are are, and he tells me that he can’t make them.  I ask why not?  He says that the recipe is for 10 people but he is using 800 grams of flour, it doesn’t make sense he can’t do it, there is no way to weigh out 800 grams of flour.  I tell him that this is like science, it is ok to experiment and that he should just estimate. Then he tells me that he can’t do it because it takes too long,  he needs an hour to let the dough rise and that is just too long.  I tell him don’t worry about it just let it rise for 30 minutes and maybe it will be ok.  Then he tells me that he needs to let it rest in a refridgerator, and he doesn’t have one (he does have one and it works, and there are cokes and fantas in it right this very moment) I tell him don’t worry about the refridgerator.  He tells me ok I will make them tonight.  Today I went back to see the bagels.  He told me that he could not do it because the electric mixer is too big to mix the dough.  Geoff was with me and we told him to just double the recipe, although I don't know why he can't just use a spoon.  It is very interesting to me, at how precise he is following the recipe, and his unwillingness to look outside the box.  I think that it has a lot to do with the education system.  There is a lot of just rote memorization, whereas in America we are taught to think of ideas, and to problem solve.  Especially for a pastry chef, you would think that he would be able to figure this kind of thing out.  It is also very apparent to me that he doesn’t understand the chemistry involved with cooking.  Hopefully the bagels will turn out alright.  I think that my next pastry shoppe project will be peanut butter cookies.  There is a lot of peanut butter here, and they know how to make cookies, so it only makes sense...doesn't it?

-Mike