Dateline: February 23 - 24, 2021 EVERYTHING BAGELS

I have been wanting to make bagels and I finally, said, do it!

So on Feb. 23, I got out the bread flour, the bread salt, the high gluten flour, the whole wheat flour, diastatic malt powder, yeast and molasses and went to town.

I followed the article in the NYTimes, How to Make Bagels that was published a couple of weeks ago. The process is not difficult, it will take 2 days and a lot of space in your fridge overnight.  Luckily, I have an outdoor deck which served as a de facto fridge until I made dinner that night, which freed up room in the fridge for the 2 sheet pans of bagels waiting to be taken to paradise.

Pre initial rise

Post Rise, pre shaping

The shaping consisted of cutting the risen dough into 12 - 13 equal sized pieces, I made 13 4-ounced sized lumps.  Each lump was shaped into a ball and then after 5 minutes, rolled by hand into a cigar shape about 9 inches long.  The ends of the cigar should be tapered so that the width of the bagel is consistent.  Take the tapered ends and roll them under your palm with the dough around your knuckles for a few seconds so that the ends will stick to each other completing the round.

Put a sheet of parchment paper that has been lightly greased and place the bagel rounds on them, 6 to a sheet pan, so you will need to have 2 ready to go.  Cover the sheet pans with plastic wrap and cover with a dampened towel and put into the fridge, on the deck, for at least 4 hours, or up to 24 hours.

Boiling and coating comes next.  I did not have malt syrup, but I did have diastatic malt powder and I used that instead with a tad of molasses for deepening the color of the boiling liquid to the color as described in the article.

I filled a bowl with 30 g of the assorted seeds and/or salt that were called for, I used black sesame, poppy, caraway, granulated onion, granulated garlic, and maldon salt.  I think next time I will used dried minced onion and garlic.

The boiling liquid comes to a boil, have a spider or skimmer near by because you will need to skim off the foam that is on the surface as the water boils.  I was able to get 4 bagels in the water bath at a time.  It's about 30 seconds a side and then they come out of the bath and are coated in the everything mixture.

These are then baked in a 450°F oven for 20-25 minutes.  What I found was that was too long, the first batch was in for 22 mins and came out very dark, the second batch was in for 20 mins and came out the same color.  I had convection on, so perhaps that makes a difference.  Maybe next time I will lower temp to 425 or 400 when I use convection.  

just out of the oven

blurry look at the crumb

The taste was divine and had a lovely chew to them.  As they got older, they got chewier and denser, so keep in mind there is no preservative in them, and therefore, they will not last as long as bakery ones.

It was a satisfying 2 day project and certainly kept me off the streets!