Making Bagels: Day 1

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/bookreviews/bba

  Today was the day! Time to learn to make bagels. The grocery store bagels have gotten so expensive ($7-9 a dozen) and all that are available are the soft, squishy Wonder Bread kind soooo, it was time. I got out my amazing bread cook book The Bread Baker's Apprentice Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread  by Peter Reinhold and got busy.  These bagels are going to rock (well I hope anyway because they take long time to make).

The bagels mostly take the usual ingredients---I am using unbleached bread flour today, next time I will experiment with whole grains. One thing I have learned in my bread baking this year is to weigh the ingredients, it is more accurate and I don't need quite so many measuring devices.

The stuff--- the little black thing is my scale, best baking purchase I made this year

sponge

 These bagels start with a sponge. Mix it up and let it sit for a couple hours until it is bubbly. This part is just flour, water and yeast this step lets some of the flavor develop.

After the sponge is ready just add in the rest of the ingredients; more flour,yeast, salt and one thing I have never worked with before, Barley Malt the recipe says it is the magic ingredient to add the perfect taste. I don't know, the stuff is really thick and sticky, kind of hard to get out of the bottle and tastes like bitter molasses. So the jury is still out on it. After adding the rest of the ingredients I kneaded it like forever. Ok not exactly forever but probably about 1/2 an hour. This dough is very firm so it can hold the bagel shape so it takes a lot of power. After kneading I shaped it into rolls and let it rest for twenty minutes.....

Pre-bagels resting --each weighs a little more then 4 oz.

  

floating bagel

After the 20 minutes I made holes in the center of each and let them rest for 20 more minutes. Then I threw one into a bowl of water, it floated so it was ready for the next step. I covered them all up and threw them in the fridge for The Long, Slow,Cold Fermentation that no self respecting bagel shop will skip...Now they are in fridge just a chillin--- waiting for  Making Bagels: Day 2, baking day.



Well that is it for today---
 Make it a good one,


Karen