There are few breads that are baked that create a sensation
in the mouth when you bite into them that can be explained without using words
like yummy, amazing chewy, and the list goes on. My journey with bagels did not
start at an early age but my love for them started with the first bite, and has
never wavered.
I recently read a quote in a magazine article about bagels that read,
“While a bagel is accurately ‘a round bread’ with a hole in the middle, it's really so, so much more than that.” Weinzweig, A. (2013, July 17). The Secret History of Bagels.
I could not agree more!
At an early age I learned a thing or two about baking. I was baking cookies as
a very young kid, maybe five or so, and helping bake cakes too. Some breads
though, we never baked. It never occurred to me to question why. I recall the
breads we ate for the Sunday dinner always came from the market as a frozen
dough, they would sit in a tin for some hours and then in the oven. Later to taste
amazing, much larger in size, and always, served warm. Strangely, as a young child, our house was
not full of bagels. We would get them from time to time but they were not a
feature in our home. My earliest memory of bagels was one day in the front of
our house on a cold October afternoon, my cousin Albert and I were joking
around and daring each other to do crazy things. I remember he topped the list
when he put something on his bagel and ate it. To this day, that something is
blocked from my mind, so I imagine it was probably gross.
As I grew older, I started to eat bagels often, and by my mid-teens
I was always happy to buy a six-pack of them from the market, and just eat
them. Even if they were not fresh, nor super tasty or chewy, I loved them. My
favorites then, and to this day, are blueberry bagels. There is something magical
about them to me, especially knowing that it doesn’t make sense to think of a blueberry
inside a bagel, and yet, I can close my eyes in any given moment, and mentally
bite into a blueberry bagel, and imagine every sensation. The taste of the
berries, the intertwined colors of blue in the dough, and that chewy taste. What
was also important was you could buy those six manufactured bagels for only
maybe two dollars and they would make an entire meal. When I was living on my
own in my teens, two dollars meant a lot and I needed to always spend it wisely.
When eating bagels there are some things to consider. Do you
like to eat the bagel toasted or plain? Do you like toppings on your bagels or
do you prefer them alone? Let us make an
edict right here and now about what is and what is not proper in terms of what
you are supposed to do with your bagel. The number one rule to bagel preparation
before entry into the mouth, is, there are no rules. Bagels are great any way
you want them, toasted, baked only, with or without toppings. If you like cream cheese, butter on toast,
butter and jam, pizza bagels, toasted salad with cheese bagels, reuben bagels, you
will get no complaints from me.
Yes, I have a favorite bagel, I love a bagel with cream
cheese. But I do not cut my bagels. I will put the cream cheese right on the
top and go full on while eating it. I also generally will not toast a bagel unless
it is a couple of days old and you risk a tooth injury while biting into it. Only
when I am making sandwiches will I slice the bagels. In our bakery, I used to
make all sorts of sandwiches for the customers with bagels, mostly including ingredients
like avocado and tomato, but sometimes in the morning I would bake pizza bagels
and sell them cold. The question really becomes, what is your favorite kind of
bagel. Please leave a message in the comments below and tell me your bagel
memories too.
When I moved to Switzerland bagels became something I did
not see very often and in fact it got to where I was only getting bagels when I
would fly back to the United States. They just are not popular, which, I do
believe is criminal. I traveled around a bit and the problem seemed to not be
just in Switzerland. Every once in a while, I would find what someone would
call a bagel a bagel, but the experience was not the same. It is interesting because I believe bagels
originated in Poland, while many think they were created in New York. With that said, hands down, I believe the best
bagels in the world come out of New York and Northern New Jersey. It pains me to
include North Jersey in that list given I am from South Jersey. If you are from
one or the other, you understand why I say that, we are two different states
duck taped together. North of exit 80, to me you are a northerner, no
discussion necessary. A ten-centimeter-wide, four-centimeter-high, chewy bagel
out of New York a few hours after it was baked is unlike any other experience
one can have.
Early in 2018, I started experimenting with bagels. What was
important to me was to learn the basics from online recipes but then create my
own version, that I could call my own, and share with the world without any
worry whatsoever. What is important to know, like all bread recipes, there are
always similarities so not everything is completely original, that is to say,
unless you are using dried seaweed as your flour. Hummm, I will get back to you
on that idea.
The journey of a baker is on of trial and error. The first few
batches of my bagels were really good for one thing, hockey pucks. You would be
sure to lose a tooth or two if you bit into them and certainly, you could carry
one in your pocket as protection against a potential stalker in the night. You
threaten someone with a stone bagel and they will back off, I am not saying
this actually happened, or not, just saying.
What I concluded in the process of making bagels was that
the ingredients are not the magic, but the process to get them shiny with a
thin perfect outer crust and chewy on the inside, is where all the real magic
happens. Before we dive into making
bagels, let me be clear, you can do them all in one day, but, if you want to
reach the apex, I suggest you set aside two days to allow that dough to work
its magic.
For my bagels, you will need some ingredients that are easy
to find. I do my bagels in stages too, so you will not have a hard time finding.
Like all of my recipes, I measure everything in weight, I never go by volume,
as it can vary, especially with flour, and that is one thing we want to be sure
we get right. And, I will repeat this a million times, but baking is different
than cooking. With cooking if we are not accurate, we can still pull of amazing
dishes, if we are not accurate with baking, amazing comes with luck and skill
only.
This recipe will yield 10 or 12 bagels depending on how you cut them. If each
dough ball weights 87 grams then you will have 12, if each one weights 104
grams, you will have ten. These weights can vary and you are welcome to make them
even bigger if you wish, like 130 grams which yields eight big bagels. Note:
depending on how closely you follow the weight instructions for ingredients,
your weights could vary. What is most important is that each one weighs roughly
the same amount so they all bake evenly.
Part 1: The pre-ferment
The first thing we want to do is make a preferment. This will enhance the flavor
of the dough. You can skip this step and mix the ingredients with part 2 from
the start, but I do not recommend it because the reward far outweighs the rushing
through the process. Do not rush baking!!
Ingredients
450g bread flour
340g water
3g/6g
(3 grams of dry yeast of 6 grams of fresh yeast. I prefer fresh every time)
1 tbsp Agave
(You can
also use maple syrup or another sweetener. We are feeding the ferment)
Method
In a bowl add all of the ingredients and mix until they are completely combined.
Do not worry about the dough being sticky. Sticky is good. With bread, sticky
is always better than dry by the way. If you ever have bread dough you are
making and it is very dry, and you notice it is hard to knead, you will bake a
brick.
Cover the bowl with a tea towel and let rest for four hours. In that time, it
may start to bubble and even rise a bit. Make sure the temperature of where it
is resting is not too hot, but not cold. If too hot it will ferment too fast
and you will lose that taste you want to get. If too cold, the fermentation
process may not happen. Generally, a good place to put them is in the oven, but
please, do not turn the oven on. You can also let it ferment over night if you
want to let the bagel process go even longer, or, suppose you want to start the
work in the evening, and continue it the next morning, this also works.
Part 2: Mixing the final dough
Now that our pre-ferment has had time to work its magic, let us mix it together
with the rest of the ingredients to finalize the dough.
Ingredients
200g bread flour
30g hot water
22g agave
20g salt
pre-ferment from part one
Method
in a bowl mix all of the ingredients together and form a dough ball. At this
point, it may still be a little sticky but do not let that scare you. Once all
of the ingredients are incorporated, lightly dust your work surface and toss
the dough out to start kneading it. You could do this in the bowl, but on the
work surface you will be able to manage it easier, and shape it better.
Knead the dough for about 8 minutes until any stickiness has gone and it forms
a nice ball. Use any kneading technique you are familiar with as long as you
are not tearing the dough. When you knead dough, you want to stretch it out and
overlap it, but if you stretch it too much and it starts to tear, you are going
too far.
Once you have completed the kneading, now you want to put
your dough in the refrigerator for overnight. If you did the preferment
overnight, then you will be making this batch for three days, otherwise it is
two days. Don’t forget you can do it all in one day, but you compromise taste.
Part 3: Let’s make some bagels.
Doesn't that sound like something
a game show host would yell out?!
Take your beautiful bagel dough out of the refrigerator and
let it rest for five to ten minutes. It was cold in there and it wants to warm
up a bit, but not too much before you start working it.
The next step you can do one of two different ways:
One, you can shape your dough into a log shape and eyeball the number of bagels
you want to make. Just make sure you cut them evenly so that the sizes are all
relatively the same, or
Two, you can weight out each piece. This is the preferred method as you are now
a baker and remember, bakers like to be accurate. Save the nuance for that
potato salad you are making to eat with the bagels later on in the day.
Once you have measured out each of your dough balls, roll
them so that they form a nice round ball. You will have eight, ten, or twelve
of these balls. The gluten in that dough has had some work so it will want to rest
a bit.
Side note: Why do we let the gluten rest? When we work dough, the gluten builds
tension. That tension is good, but it also is tiring for the gluten. Like when
you go to the gym and exercise, you do not just go from one thing to the other
without a little rest, and here it is no different.
After letting the bagel dough rest, we are now ready to
shape them. Get a piece of parchment paper out that will hold all of them with
space in between, we do not want them touching.
Take one of the dough balls and start to flatten it out a little bit in
your hands. When you see it is no longer round, press your thumb through the
middle to create a hole.
Once you have the hole, now you can start working the dough
to stretch it out in your hands using your fingers and thumbs on the inside and
outside. Pick the size of your bagel you want, but make sure the hole is big
enough. If it is only an inch, it could close up by the time we start the boiling
and baking process. Generally, I make mine about two inches or a tiny bit less.
If you make the whole very big then the bagels will be fine, but you will not be
eating a bagel, just something that uses bagel dough.
Lay each one of your shaped bagels out on the paper and then
cover it with a tea towel and let that rest for about an hour. You want them to
start to ferment and expand.
Twenty minutes before the bagels are done resting and fermenting, turn your
oven on to 260 (or as high as it goes if it doesn’t go that high). We want the
oven nice and hot when we start baking them.
Part 4: Lets boil some bagels.
Get a large pot and fill it about two thirds of the way with
water and get it boiling. Once the water is boiling add a couple of tablespoons
of baking soda in the water. This is used to help make that shiny outside of
the bagel when it gets into the oven.
While the water is heating up, get some seeds or things you
want to put on top of the bagels. Sesame seeds would be a great start, and
leaving them plain is also perfect too.
Now that the water is ready to go, your bagels have fermented,
you want to notice that the up side of your bagel is the top and what is
touching the paper is the bottom. Gently lift the bagel and place it into the
water. If it sinks and doesn’t float right to the top it means you have not
fermented them long enough. If there is space, add a second, or a third, all
the while trying to remember which side is the top and which side is the
bottom.
Boil the bagel for one minute, then turn it over and boil
for another minute. Once complete, take the bagel out of the pot and put it
back on to a new piece of parchment paper. They will be wet and we do not want
them to get the other ones which have not been boiled yet wet too.
Now take the second set of bagels and gently place them in
the water. Once they are in the water, take the seeds and sprinkle them on the
tops of your bagels if you are using seeds. This is the perfect time because
the bagels are warm, and wet and the seeds will stick very nicely and very
easily.
Continue this process until all of the bagels have been
boiled.
Part 5: Baking the bagels
Because the bagels are wet, we do not need to introduce more
water into the oven, but, if you want to spritz the oven with a bit of water,
no one will call the bagel police.
Place the tray of bagels in the middle rack of your oven and
bake for 12-14 minutes until they have a nice golden brown on the outside. Not
too dark though, just right.
Once you take your bagels out of the oven, let them cool
down a little bit before biting in to them. An hour would be perfect, but it is
very difficult to wait that long once you smell how great they are, I
understand. Just do the best you can!!
And a Bonus!!!
Do you like bagel chips? Simple!
Take a couple of your bagels that you baked and slice them
into thin slices, maybe 5mm thick and lay them out on a tray with parchment paper.
Once you have as many as you want, put them in the oven on a low to medium heat
and bake them until they dry out. You can spice them up before baking them too
if you want, by adding garlic salt or something else you fancy, like rosemary.
Please let me know how you like this recipe and if you have
tried it. What worked and what didn’t work for you. And remember, bagels are
staple foods, which means you can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Well, I do!!
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