Daring Bakers Newbie--My First Bagels Ever!

One little thing to talk about before I start the bagel post--for those of you who missed the ending about the cake I mailed to Sher of What Did You Eat, the cake did arrive by 10am the next morning and it traveled really well, better than I thought it would. The only visible sign of having been shipped is that the plastic wrap left a faint pattern in the top of the fondant. That's it.  Sher said she and Bob really enjoyed it and so did her friend Nancy, who dropped by after work.

To see the cake, how it arrived, and what it looked like cut into, click HERE to go to Sher's weblog.

What a great experiment! I was really pleased with the results. So now we know: you really can mail cake and get it there in one piece (bad pun) and edible.

To the Daring Bakers founders, Ivonne of Creampuffs in Venice and Lisa of La Mia Cucina, thank you for including me into the group.  I love the whole concept of challenging ourselves to new baking heights, especially the whole idea of mixing it up between sweet and savory, cakes to pies to breads to whomever's-turn-it-is-to-name-it.  Because my--cough cough--expertise--cough cough is in cakes and decorating cakes, I was thrilled to try my hand at bagels, something completely different from my norm. 

I do make loaves of bread and dinner rolls all the time for our meals, by hand at times and by having burned through three (yes, THREE) bread machines over the last 15 years of my marriage (the first was a wedding gift), but I've never tired bagels or pretzels. I've thought about it but the DB group and this challenge gave me the proper motivation I needed to take the plunge, pun intended.  For those of you who don't get the joke in "take the plunge" you will as soon as you read the recipe and see the pics.

This month's challenge was created by Jenny of All Things Edible and Freya of Writing at the Kitchen Table and the recipe's title is:  Real Honest Jewish Purist's Bagels.

I'll tell you what my very first thought was when I printed off the recipe and it printed off to 3 1/2 page--"(Screw) me! I wanted to be in this group why?!"  I then mentally added and "Oy!" just to stay in theme. 

Well, you know what? A couple of the techniques were different from anything else I'd done before but it wasn't really "hard".  Putting them together, following the recipe, and coming out with a usable product at the other end was not difficult, BUT, what was really difficult was getting them any resemblance this side of heaven to each other.  I know, and the recipe reaffirmed, that a real bagel is formed by hand and that they're not completely uniform, but let me show you something that explains my personality and why that lack of uniformity bugged me--

This was my hors d'oeuvres table from the Pampered Chef party I hosted the other night. See my cheese tray in the front?  Let me make it a little easier for you--

There are three layers of cheese slices in each row, lined up to perfectly fill edge to edge.  My husband walked up behind me while I was carefully slicing each piece as evenly as possible and using a ruler I keep in the kitchen to line up the front edge exactly.  He stood there for a while. Of course he was admiring my precision, I thought.  Nah.  He looked at me with the same look of disgust he'd have if he found a booger in his coffee and said "You are the biggest control freak I know and THAT'S the proof, right there."  And then he walked away LAUGHING at me. Not WITH me. AT me.

I was a little put out by that comment, especially since he disrupted my concentration on making my cheese exactly even on every side.  How could he say such a thing just because I like inanimate objects to do what I want them to and to do it in as uniform a manner as possible?  Is that so much to ask from a world that revolves supposedly on the chaos theory? 

I didn't think so either.

So my point of that story is if you are like me and you're a big control freak one of those people who likes everything to be prettily perfect in every way... this recipe is even more of a challenge than Jenny and Freya had any idea it would be because those little buggers do not like to be the same size, shape, consistency to each other no matter how much you poke, roll, shape, slap, dunk, or swear at them.  And believe me, I tried all of those things, especially the swearing, and they still came out an attractive bunch of bagels on the whole but not even close to consistent and perfect. Sigh. So look at the recipe as an exercise in humility and plow through anyway because the end result will forever ruin you for a grocery store-bought bagel.  I think Gene and I each ate four a piece the first day.  Hmmmm...maybe making them often isn't such a good idea.

To see how the other members of the group fared, click on any of the blog names in the list on the left, titled "Daring Bakers".

Real Honest Jewish Purist's Bagels

(I'm editing the personal remarks on the recipe for brevity.  Meaning, I'm too lazy to type out 3 1/2 pages of a recipe.  I'll leave in the really important remarks and I'll put in lots of my own on how the recipe performed for me.)

Ingredients:

6-8 cups bread (high-gluten) flour

4 Tbsp dry baking yeast

6 Tbsp granulated white sugar or light honey

3 tsp salt

3 cups [hot] water  (The recipe says "hot" but the temp needs to be 110-115 F exactly)

A little cooking oil  (I use cooking spray)

1 gallon water in stock pot

3-5 Tbsp malt syrup or sugar    (I saw that someone in the group paid $75 for malt syrup. I wouldn't know where to begin to find it in this town nor would I pay that price unless I had a bunch of recipes there was nothing to substitute for it, so I used sugar.)

Cornmeal  (Lots of it)

Directions:

Pour water into a mixing bowl, whisking in the sugar or honey.  Sprinkle the yeast over the surface of the water, and whisk to dissolve.

Wait about 10 minutes for the yeast to begin to grow, or proof.

Add 3 cups of flour and 2 tsp of salt to the water and yeast and begin mixing it in, by hand or with a wooden spoon.  (By the way, this can all be done easily in the Kitchen Aid, but for this challenge everything is done by hand.)

Add more flour, a half cup at a time, until the mix becomes a true dough.  You can knead in the bowl or on a floured countertop.  The dough will become heavy but still elastic.  You should be able to knead in at least the 6 cups, if not the full 8 cups of flour. (My dough got up to about 7 1/2 cups before I felt like I was going to lose elasticity by adding more.)

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, oil the surface of the dough, and cover with a dampened kitchen towel. Set in a warm (approx 80 degrees F) but not hot space to rise to double volume.

While the dough is rising, fill your stockpot with the gallon of water and heat to boil.  When boiling add malt syrup or sugar and adjust heat so that the water barely simmers.

Once the dough has risen, turn itout onto your work surface, punch it down, and divide immediately into as many hunks as you want to make bagels. For this recipe you'll probably end up with about 15 (I had 16, just FYI).  To form the bagels there are two ways:  the roll a snake and the punch a hole.  I'm not even going to write up the directions for roll a snake because the air space around you will be polluted with cursing. By you.  I'm not kidding.  So let's talk about punch-a-hole method. That one worked well for me and this is how I did it.  Basically, you just roll the dough into a ball, flatten it a bit, stick your finger through the middle and then twirl it around a bit on your index fingers to enlarge the hole.  The recipe assures you that they will not be and are not expected to be perfect.

I will jump in here and tell the one secret I learned from my experience.  The next time I make them I will not form them all at the same time and then begin boiling them AFTER I've formed each one because the first few came out fine but by the time I got to the last ones they'd risen so much in the wait that they became more dough-ish than bagel-ish and they were much larger than the first ones.  The last ones also did not sink to the bottom of the pot like they should but we haven't talked about that yet.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

The recipe says to let the bagels sit for 10 minutes. I will delete this step the next time because this is where I really got into trouble with too much rising on my list half dozen bagels.  So you can do that if you want but I will form two or three and immediately drop in the water. While those are simmering their 3 minutes on each side, I would form my next batch to take the plunge, and so on.  The water bath is what gives the bagels their unique crust and chew so don't skip this step.

This is where my water boiling got a little away from me for a minute:

Remove the bagels from the water with a slotted spoon and set on a clean kitchen towel on the cabinet to drain.

Prepare baking sheets by generously spreading cornmeal over them and arrange the bagels on top, leaving space in between. 

If you want to dress the bagels, brush over an egg white wash and sprinkle with any kind of seeds or dehydrated onions, etc, whatever appeals to you.

Let bake for 25 minutes, turn them over, and bake for another 10 minutes.  (I disagreed with these times.  I didn't bake them for even close to this.  I did about 15 minutes on the first side and 5 on the second and they were a nice golden color and done in the middle.)

Cool completely on racks.

Comments

[Amanda @ Little Foodies]

I think they look great. Real artisan bagels. It was my first challenge too and I'm not good with dough so was amazed when they turned out edible I didn't really care what they looked like. Infact I was pleased with the taste it clouded my judgement on how they looked and I thought even the really deformed ones looked great!

[MyKitchenInHalfCups]

They are perfect in my world! But I guess I never expected them to all look the same. Yeast and hot water have a great deal of independence!
Well done Glenna!

[breadchick]

They are wonderful looking! Great job on your first challenge with us!!! Oh and that CAKE!! Spectacular.

[cheryl]

Really great job. I love seeing the individual steps you did. Welcome aboard the DB train.

[Patricia Scarpin]

Glenna, your bagels look great!

[Helen]

Congrats on your first challenge! Great job, they look great!

[foodierachel]

Those are beautiful! Aunt Martha's natural food store by Bass Pro Shops has malt syrup, I think it was around $6. Just in case you ever wanted to make some again. By the way, I love the comment about the cheese. Sounds familiar...

[ilva]

Wonderful bagels!

[sher]

I'm still laughing over Gene's remark about the cheese. I can just picture it in my mind. Great job on the bagels! They look delicious.

[gilly]

Hi Glenna, your bagels turned out great! I love the sunflower seeds - if I'd been there, I'd have wanted to devour them all! Oy! ;)

[Jenny]

Those bagels look wonderful to me! As perfect as any bagel I've ever seen before!
Good work on your first challenge!

[Laura]

Well done those are some yummy looking bagels!

[Ivonne]

Well done and congratulations on completing your first challenge!

[Glenna]

Amanda--hilarious! I know what you mean. They were so much better than what you get in the store that I didn't care at all either. Thanks!

Tanna--I'll second that. Inanimate (sort of) objects with minds of their own.

Breadchick--thanks on both!

Cheryl--thanks! So glad. Sometimes I wonder if the step pics are too much. Thanks for your input.

Patricia--Thanks! I really appreciate that.

Helen--Thank you!

Rachel--Love the discussion we had about that. Just for folks who might live in Southwest Missouri, that would be Mama Jean's Natural Food Store next to Maschino's on Campbell.... I think a lot of people can relate to the cheese thing. The funniest part is Gene's a control freak too but he doesn't see it in himself!

Ilva--Thanks!

Sher--You have the advantage. You've met him so you can SEE him saying it! LOL!@

Gilly--Thanks! And I would have happily served them to you!

Jenny--Thank you. That's so sweet.

Laura--Thanks! 'preciatcha!

Ivonne--Thank you very much!

[Mehgan]

Those look wonderful! I love how thick they turned out. I'm a big fan of thick and chewy bagels, puny little bagels frustrate me. And thanks for posting about proofing yeast, that helped me a lot (now I actually know what it looks like)!

And that comment Gene made about the cheese is classic, I love it! It totally sounds like something my husband would say; I'm the exact same way when it comes to having my stuff turn out exactly as I like it. Job well done, G!

[Meeta]

Just brilliant. YOu had me cracking up at the ruler and your husband. Do you really have a ruler in the kitchen? Now that is a great kitchen gadget! But back to your bagels. They look great and well done on a fantastic challenge!

[Elle]

Great job with your first challenge! Think of the variety of sizes and shapes of the bagels as a metaphor for the Daring Bakers...we are a unruly lot sometimes :)
Glad I wasn't the only one who didn't want to stop with one or two bagels.

[Alisha]

Great job with the bagels! I've made pretzels before (same boil, bake type thing) but never bagels. Maybe I'll have to put that on my "to do" list -- especially since Liam eats one every morning.

I am another one of those "line the cheese up" type people so I understand where you're coming from. It totally screws up my mood when food is out of place!

[Kristina]

You mailed a cake? I love it! You cake that looks like a loaf of bread is so cute! I wish I could have been there SO much :( I can picture the Gene comment like a movie playing in my mind...precious. :)

[heather]

Your bagels look divine! Congrats on your first challenge. Glad to have you on board!
I want to talk cake decorating with you super soon!!

[Sara]

I was surprised that it wasn't that hard either. I'll be making these on a regular basis from now on.

[peabody]

Yes conformaty was not happening for these bagels. Excellent job.

[Kelly-Jane]

Well done on your first challenge, they look great! I'm with you on wanting them to have turned out perfect!! but it was lots of fun :)

[Mary]

I see nothing wrong with lining up your cheese. But I'm the kind of person who has everything on top of my bedside table perfectly parallel to one another. Nice job on your first challenge!

[Glenna]

Mehgan--That's funny. I like him already. The dry sens of humor is a dead giveaway!

Meeta--Yeah (whisper) I really do. But I use it mostly in cake decorating to get things lined up right. That's my story and I'm sticking too it!

Elle-You're right. That's a great analogy.

Alisha--I'm so surprised by how many of us "line up the cheese people" are coming out of the closet. Hee hee!

Kristina--We MISSED you! And yup. It really worked to mail a cake.

Heather--Come on over, would love to chat! I might even make petit fours for the occasion.

Sara--that's what I was thinking too--a half batch every so often wouldn't be that hard at all!

Peabody--Yes, it was a lesson in letting go of complete control! :-)

Kelly Jane--yes, but they are delcious, aren't they? Yum!

Mary--Haha! I understand completely. At my other job I used to do that with my desktop.