This post is pretty simple. I made bagels. I made bagels.
What more is there really to say?
Let’s try this:
I recognized the specialness of bagels when I was about eight years old on my first family visit to Ottawa. My aunt made a special trip to Bagel Bagel near the Byward Market for bagels and lox one morning. It was then I acquired a taste for cream cheese and fell in love with the donut-shaped baked good. Most of the Edmonton bagels I ate were buns with holes—too airy, not chewy. I fondly remember The Bagel Tree. But that closed down. There were years with paltry substitutes from The Great Canadian Bagel, but then Dr. Atkins rained on that parade.
I did not have a decent bagel again until I moved to Toronto. My bagel shop of choice was Kiva’s. Grad studies’ stress meant that I was a big fan of the oversized poppy twister.
In the last few years, I’ve been lucky to have friends bring me Fairmount bagels from Montreal on a regular basis. And now in Vancouver, I have both Solly’s and Siegel’s to rely on for stocking my freezer with real bagel goodness.
And by real, I mean boiled. Not misted, not glazed. Boiled.
So, why try making my own when I’m now essentially in Edmontonian bagel heaven?
I don’t really know. I just did it as a February baking project. And after taking that baking course at NAIT last winter, I knew I could do it.
The results?
Wonderful.
But… a lot of work. Time, elbow grease, patience, research.
Because of the number of people who have blogged about baking bagels via Peter Reinhardt’s famous baking book, I decided I would use that recipe. Lots of blogging means lots of information on pitfalls, tips and tricks.
I read that a bagel is a bagel because of 1) the boiling and 2) the flour used. High protein/gluten flour gives bagels their distinctive chewiness. A bagelry will often have flour of a higher gluten percentage than bread flour. Where did that leave me? Adding vital wheat gluten to all purpose flour. I don’t have the space for a five kilo bag of bread flour, but I do have the space for a small bag of gluten (found at both Save-on Foods and Whole Foods). Information on how much to add was inconsistent, but I went with one teaspoon for every one cup of flour.
The dough was stiff. Too stiff for a Kitchen Aid and almost too stiff for my weak arms. But I ploughed through. All by hand. All on my little counter.
It’s a two-day affair, with about four to five hours needed on the first day, and about one hour on the second. I referred most strongly to the notes I read on The Fresh Loaf (where recipe is from) and Smitten Kitchen.
Peter Reinhardt Bagels
Makes one dozen bagels.
Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant yeast
4 cups bread flour*
2.5 cups water
Dough:
0.5 teaspoon instant yeast
3.75 cups bread flour*
2.75 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons of malt powder (or 1 tablespoon malt syrup or 1 tablespoon honey*)
1 tablespoon baking soda
Cornmeal
Toppings (sesame, poppy seeds, etc)
Day 1:
1. Stir the yeast into the flour in a large mixing bowl. Add the water and stir until all ingredients are blended. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for two hours.
2. Remove the plastic wrap and stir the additional yeast into the sponge. Add 3 cups of the flour, the malt powder, and the salt into the bowl and mix until all of the ingredients form a ball. You need to work in the additional 3/4 cups of flour to stiffen the dough, either while still mixing in the bowl or while kneading. The dough should be stiffer and drier than normal bread dough, but moist enough that all of the ingredients are well blended.*
3. Pour the dough out of the bowl onto a clean surface and knead for 10 minutes.*
4. Immediately after kneading, split the dough into a dozen small pieces around 4 1/2 ounces each.* Roll each piece into a ball and set it aside. When you have all 12 pieces made, cover them with a damp towel and let them rest for 20 minutes.
5. Shaping the bagel: punch your thumb through the center of each roll and then rotate the dough, working it so that the bagel is as even in width as possible.
6. Place the shaped bagels on an oiled sheet pan, with an inch or so of space between one another (use two pans, if you need to). If you have parchment paper, line the sheet pan with parchment and spray it lightly with oil before placing the bagels on the pan. Cover the pan with plastic and allow the dough to rise for about 20 minutes.
7. Test the bagels: Drop one of them into a bowl of cool water: if the bagel floats back up to the surface in under ten seconds it is ready to retard. If not, it needs to rise more. When ready, place the pan into the refrigerator for the night. The dough can rest in there for up to two days.
Baking Day:
8. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Adding one tablespoon of baking soda to the pot to alkalize the water is suggested to replicate traditional bagel shop flavor.
9. When the pot is boiling, drop a few of the bagels into the pot one at a time and let them boil for a minute. Use a large, slotted spoon or spatula to gently flip them over and boil them on the other side. Boil the tops first.
10. Before removing them from the pot, sprinkle corn meal onto the sheet pan (you can keep parchment from overnight rest). Remove them one at a time, set them back onto the sheet pan, and top them right away, while they are still slightly moist. Repeat this process until all of the bagels have been boiled and topped.
11. Once they have, place the sheet pan into the preheated oven and bake for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to 450 degrees, rotate the pan, and bake for another 5 minutes until the bagels begin to brown.* Remove the pan from the oven and let cool for at least 15 minutes.
Notes:
Sponge and dough—I wanted whole wheat bagels, so I made the following substitutions for the all purpose flour: 2 cups of whole wheat flour in the sponge, 1 cup of whole wheat + 0.5 cups oat bran in the dough. I also added 0.5 teaspoon of cinnamon to the dough.
Vital wheat gluten—I added one teaspoon per cup of flour and REMOVED 1 teaspoon of regular flour (I was worried the dough would be too dry otherwise.)
Flavouring—I added honey.
Step 2—I ended up having to add a few tablespoons of water in the mixing process to get the dough smooth.
Step 3—I kneaded for 15-20 minutes.
Step 4—I made smaller bagels, ~100 grams each, and got 16 out of this recipe instead of 12.
Step 11—After turning the heat down, my bagels baked for an additional 8 minutes, not 5.
I have to say that I am quite proud of myself for pulling this off. A Sunday brunch of fresh bagels from your own oven is a beautiful thing. I had my first toasted one yesterday and it was perfect. So chewy I could cry.
My oven did that!
