Sunday, April 15, 2007

Bagels

(Gasp! a post on a Sunday!)

Happy Tax Day Everyone! i hope each and every of my US readers will be getting a healthy refund this year.

I decided to celebrate by continuing my experiments with boiled breads.



This is my 2nd bagel recipe. The 1st one, from the King Arthur Flour Cook Book was tasty, chewy and dense, but fairly small, brownish in appearance and they did not have that high gloss crust you see on bagels from the bagel store. This recipe i found on the internets.
I will definitely try it again, if only because I was not, um, 100% sober the night i was making them and I forgot a step. Namely, adding more yeast to the sponge before adding the additional flour. I was concerned they wouldn't rise very much at all, but as you can see they turned out ok. And they taste....um hold on a sec and let me go get one.

OK, what is better than a bagel fresh out of the oven? (Anything fresh out of the oven)
These are scrumptious. The bagel crust on these is excellent, even a little gloss. (No idea how this happened, the recipes were fairly similar, except this one used a sponge and had an overnight retardation. I will have to consult my On Food and Cooking) They have the classic crunchy outside and chewy inside. If you visit the link you will see the posters bagels are even bigger and more gorgeous than mine, which I am going to take a wild guess is that extra yeast.

This recipe has the advantage of doing most of the work the night before. All you have to do morning of is boil and bake (which takes only 10 mins).

If you decide to try it, here are my little hints. I've used brown sugar (no malt powder) with all my bagels so far and they taste authentic to me. Take a cue from Deb and don't bother with a lightly floured kneading service, a dough this dry doesn't need it. Also, the recipe poster wasn't sure if the baking soda in the boiling water made a taste difference and i am here to tell you it does. Use it!

If you make them, enjoy. If not, maybe you will be lucky enough to be invited over for one some day... ;)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take one look at those lovelies and one need not wonder why I want to keep a Chicago branch prosperous so I have many, many excuses to taste MR's goodies.

alexis said...

AHHHRRRRGGGG!!!! Why is there a delicious bagel post to be read on a Monday morning???

Considering I have only recently mastered defrosting frozen bread in my combi-oven, I'd say bagels are a long way off. Waaah!