Mini Onion Bialys

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mini onion bialys cooling
Chewy and super savory!

Mini Bialys, or, as we like to call them, Babialys, are a traditional Polish or Jewish bread product normally made with onions and poppy seeds. Well, maybe the mini part isn’t traditional, but making them smaller means you can eat more, so let’s do it. Now, you might never have had, or perhaps even heard of Bialys before, but don’t let that scare you. They’re similar to a bagel, but without a hole — just a depression filed with caramelized onions. And, they’re tasty! So, let’s scratch up a bunch of Babialys!

We’ve wanted to make bialys for a long time now. In the past, we’ve made Pletzels, which are sort of a cross between foccacia and a bialy, but these will be the real deal; well, as real as we know how to make them, at least according to The Hot Bread Kitchen, by Jessamyn Waldman Rodrigues, who title this recipe Traditional Onion Bialys.

Mini Onion Bialys

Servings: 30 mini-bialys
Author: Shawn

Ingredients

For the dough

  • 320 g lukewarm water (1 1/3 cup)
  • 465 g bread flour (3 1/3 cups)
  • 120 g sour dough starter (1/2 cup)
  • 30 g bread flour (1/4 cup)
  • 3/4 tsp dried yeast
  • 1 Tbs kosher salt

For the filling

  • 3 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 large white onions diced
  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 60 g 1/2 cup bread crumbs (1/2 cup)
  • 1 1/2 Tbs poppy seeds

Instructions

For the dough

  • Place water and 465 g bread flour in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Mix on low for 2 minutes, or until flour is completely incorporated. Let stand 20-30 minutes.
  • Meanwhile, mix together starter and the 30 g bread flour. Cover and let stand 20-30 minutes.
  • Add starter mixture to the mixer bowl along with yeast and salt. Knead on medium-low for 5-7 minutes. Remove from bowl and knead a few times by hand. The dough will be slightly sticky. Dust mixer bowl with flour and place dough in bowl. Cover and let rise until doubled, 90 minutes.

For the filling

  • Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and sprinkle with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions begin to brown. Remove from heat.
  • Stir in bread crumbs and poppy seeds and set aside.

For baking

  • Place 4 pieces (18x18 inch) of baking parchment on your counter.
  • Turn out dough onto a lightly floured work surface and divide into about thirty 30 g pieces, shaping each into a small ball. Place 7-8 on each piece of parchment, flattening slightly and leaving 2-3 inches of space between them. Cover and let rise until very soft, 60-90 minutes.
  • Preheat oven to 450°F. Place a baking stone in the oven to preheat.
  • Uncover bialys, use your fingers to make a depression in the center, and scoop about a tablespoon of filling into the depression, pressing down so the onion mixture holds together.
  • Use a pizza peel or the back of a baking sheet to transfer bialys, parchment and all, to the baking stone.
  • Bake 15-16 minutes, or until browned. Cool completely.

Ingredient discussion:

Before you move on because you don’t have starter, we’ll tell you what to do. In place of the starter-flour mixture, simply mix together 90 g (1/2 cup + 2 tsp) bread flour, 60 g (1/4 cup) lukewarm water, and about 1/8 teaspoon yeast. Do this 2-4 hours before starting. This is known as a poolish. Make sure to mix these in a container that’s several times larger than the resulting dough, as this will rise and double or triple (or more) in size. For bread flour, we really recommend using King Arthur bread flour. Simply put, it’s the best bread flour that’s readily available. If you don’t have extra-virgin olive oil, feel free to substitute another oil (or even butter).

Procedure in detail:

For the dough:
shaggy soaker
The soaker will look shaggy and sticky, but will give the water time to soak into the flour.

Make soaker. It might not seem as if this is really needed, but it does give the flour time to start hydrating, which means gluten is developing so you’ll get a nice chewy bread product. So, combine the 465 g of bread flour and water in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment and mix on low until the flour is completely incorporated, about 2 minutes. Turn off mixer and let stand 20 to 30 minutes.

Freshen starter. If you’re using a sour dough starter, mix together the 30 g of flour and starter in a small bowl. Cover and let stand for 20 to 30 minutes. If you’re not using a starter, read the Ingredients in Detail section above. If you forgot to make the poolish, no worries; make it now (if you wish, you can cover the flour mixture in the mixer bowl and let the poolish work for several hours, or just use the poolish after 30 minutes).

mixing dough
Here you can see the starter on the left; it has just about the same consistency as the soaker, just a slightly different color.

Mix and knead. Add the starter mixture to the dough in the mixer along with the yeast and salt. Turn the mixer to medium-low and knead for 5 to 7 minutes. This dough is pretty stiff and springy so your mixer might jump around a bit, making you think there’s too much flour in the dough. There isn’t.

bialy dough
After kneading, the dough will be nice and smooth. Don’t be tempted to use oil in the bowl; it’ll make the bialys softer and less chewy.

Let rise. Pull the dough out and knead it several times by hand. This will help shape it into a nice ball. With your third hand, lightly dust the mixer bowl with flour. Place the dough back in the bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in size, about 90 minutes.

For the filling:
frying onions
It seems as if this is way too many onions, doesn’t it?

Fry onions. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions, sprinkle with the salt, and fry, stirring occasionally, until onions begin to brown, about 20 to 30 minutes. Don’t brown them too much as they’ll brown a lot more when they’re baked on the bialys.

bialy filling
The onions shrink so you’ll have just the right amount of filling once you add the poppy seeds and bread crumbs.

Add poppy seeds and bread crumbs. Remove the onions from the heat, stir in the poppy seeds and bread crumbs, and set aside until it’s time to bake.

For Baking:

Prepare parchment. Tear off about 4 pieces of parchment, each about 18×18 inches. You’ll be placing multiple bialys on the parchment so they’ll slide onto and off of a baking stone easily and in one go. If you don’t have parchment, you might try sliding the bialys directly onto the stone, several at a time. To make it easier, make about 12 larger bialys when you shape them.

shaping bialys
You can start forming the indentations while you shape the bialys, but if you wait, that’ll be fine, too.

Divide and shape. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and spread out a bit. Divide the dough into about thirty 30 gram (1 ounce) pieces and shape each into a ball. Place about 7 or 8 on each piece of parchment, flattening them into a disk and leaving several inches of space between. We placed a (cold) baking stone under the parchment so we knew we wouldn’t have a bialy fall off the edge while baking.

Let rise. Cover the bialys and let rise until very soft, 60 to 90 minutes.

Preheat oven to 450°F. Place a baking stone (or two if you have them) in the oven to preheat, too. Naturally, do this preheating before the bialys have finished rising; that way, they won’t be ready while the oven is still heating. You know your oven best, so we won’t recommend a specific time.

bialys ready for the oven.
We have a round baking stone so we had to place our bialys in a circle on the parchment.

Add filling. Uncover the bialys, and, with your fingers, make a depression in the center, stretching the dough outwards, if needed. For mini-bialys, scoop about a tablespoon of onion filling into the depression and press it down so it’ll hold together. We found that the back of the spoon was perfect for pressing down the filling.

Bake. Use a pizza peel, or the back of a backing sheet, or a piece of stiff cardboard, to lift a bialy-covered parchment sheet and slide it onto your baking stone. Bake until the onions are caramelized and the dough is browned, about 15 minutes. Once baked, transfer to a baking rack to cool completely.

Well, we’ve not had bialys before, so we can’t really say if these meet the traditional standards. We can say that we brought them down to our weekly walk and they were well-received by all. One person there did grow up eating bialys in the Chicago area, and she said these were really good. We agree, so, five stars.

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