Making Bagels for Food Wednesday

 Hi everyone. Hope your week is going well so far. 

Today I am joining everyone including our  hostess Kathy over at Food Wednesday.

Last week I had a hankering for a bagel.  We had bought some maybe a month ago, and they had tasted good. Then they were gone, but I still wanted one. This time instead of going to buy some more, I figured since I had the ingredients and the time, I would make some.

I used the recipe from this cookbook I have and that I'll describe in this post. I've made them with this recipe before, and they aren't difficult to make, except there are several steps  and you need to time what you do.  You also need to let them raise in the fridge overnight, so it is best to make the dough later in the day or evening. It's a fun occasional baking project, but not something I think I would want to do just because I feel like a bagel. (But worth the time and effort as they do taste great.)

I was making plain bagels. This cookbook also has recipes for wheat and other bagels, but I wanted plain so I could use cream cheese and some cherry jam I have on them.

For ingredients and steps:

 You start with 2 teaspoons of dry yeast, 1/2 tsp. of sugar and 1 1/2 cups of lukewarm water. You mix those and let them sit 5-10 minutes until bubbly.

While they are sitting, you put 4 cups of bread/strong flour, a pinch of salt, and a recommended 1 heaping tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons of diastatic malt powder together in a bowl. This malt powder gives a good rise because it adds enzymes that help the yeast make use of the starch in the flour.  There are substitutes you can add to replicate the taste but I'm not sure the substitutes add the enzymes.

Once your yeast liquid is bubbly, add it to your flour mixture. This recipe recommended using a mixer, first 3-4 minutes on low or until your dough starts to come together, and then for 5-7 minutes on medium to complete the dough and kneed it. 

Let the dough sit a few minutes, and then separate it into balls. It is not a sticky dough at all.  I used a scale to measure my dough balls so they would be of similar sizes, but you don't really need to do that. This recipe should make 8-10 bagels, depending on the size you want them to be. Then let those sit for 10-15 minutes. 

I ended up with 10 bagels, using approximately 3.5 ounces of dough for each.

Then you shape the dough balls into rings, put on a parchment lined or greased baking sheet and refrigerate for 12-18 hours.

To make the rings: use your hands to roll the dough from a ball shape into a line shape. Then take the 2 ends of your rolled out dough and twist them together. Be sure you overlap the 2 ends of the dough when you twist them, and with your fingers, carefully kneed the twist into a  solid piece of dough.

The next morning I preheated my oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C).  This recipe recommends a baking or pizza stone. Let that heat up with the oven for at least 30 minutes. Once that time approaches, boil some water in wide pan and then turn it down to a simmer. Don't take your bagels out of the fridge until you are ready to cook them otherwise they may rise and close in the hole.

You should put the puffy side down into the boiling water first, and then after 30-60 seconds flip them. After 30-60 seconds of the other side being down, remove them from the water and let the excess drip off. Then put them directly onto the baking stone. Let them bake for 10 minutes, then flip them over and bake another 3 to 5 minutes until they are shade pf golden brown you would like.

As you can tell, there are a lot of steps to this process; none of which are hard, but they do require your attention.

 I added some everything bread topping to mine, which I did when I first put them on the stone, before they had baked.

The finished bagels are  yummy though.

Especially if you have a high carb lunch splurge. Smile.

If you are interested in the actual recipe or have any questions, let me know. And as this is a food post, I will quote Julia Child and say "Bon Appetit."

Thanks for visiting.