Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Bagel Bonanza
Long demanded by a certain Mr. Incognito Holmes, I have finally broken down and made that Noo-Yawk treat, the bagel! Yes, it's boiled. And yes, it's baked. How did they turn out? Read on!
I'm following the recipe from the book, Bread: From Sourdough to Rye, from which I have made a few well received hits as challah and olive-cilantro pitas.
As always, I started with the lexan container of dough. I don't know if my measurements were a bit off (I "converted" the recipe from volumetric measures to weight measurements), but the dough was very very moist and I ended up using a lot of extra flour. The recipe seems to say that the dough should be moist rather than dry, so I guess that's a good sign? Makes for more difficult kneading that's for sure.
I split the dough into small balls and poked my finger through the middle, twirling them around it to make the hole... I wonder if this is how donuts are made?
I took each proto-bagel and plopped it into a boiling vat of water with some molasses in it. I remember my baba doing something similar like this with donuts, except instead of water it was boiling oil. :)
The bagels only sat in there for about 30 seconds a side, and then on to some baking trays where they got "decorated". Sesame + poppy, my favourite. :)
Voila, the final product. Sure, so perhaps they're not as "circular" as some would like, but really-- how can you really be sure with such an airy-fairy term as "circular". Does it even have a real definition? (And don't give me any of that "2*pi*r" crap. That's just what the government wants you to believe).
Anyways, they were fairly tasty (what homemade bread product isn't?), but as never having had a true New Yawk bagel, I don't know what to compare it against. They were definitely a lot breadier and lighter than the Montreal style bagels I'm used to from Segal's, but not quite as mouth-drying yucky as those bread-we've-shaped-in-bagel-form that you get from the supermarket or Costco.
I'm following the recipe from the book, Bread: From Sourdough to Rye, from which I have made a few well received hits as challah and olive-cilantro pitas.
As always, I started with the lexan container of dough. I don't know if my measurements were a bit off (I "converted" the recipe from volumetric measures to weight measurements), but the dough was very very moist and I ended up using a lot of extra flour. The recipe seems to say that the dough should be moist rather than dry, so I guess that's a good sign? Makes for more difficult kneading that's for sure.
I split the dough into small balls and poked my finger through the middle, twirling them around it to make the hole... I wonder if this is how donuts are made?
I took each proto-bagel and plopped it into a boiling vat of water with some molasses in it. I remember my baba doing something similar like this with donuts, except instead of water it was boiling oil. :)
The bagels only sat in there for about 30 seconds a side, and then on to some baking trays where they got "decorated". Sesame + poppy, my favourite. :)
Voila, the final product. Sure, so perhaps they're not as "circular" as some would like, but really-- how can you really be sure with such an airy-fairy term as "circular". Does it even have a real definition? (And don't give me any of that "2*pi*r" crap. That's just what the government wants you to believe).Anyways, they were fairly tasty (what homemade bread product isn't?), but as never having had a true New Yawk bagel, I don't know what to compare it against. They were definitely a lot breadier and lighter than the Montreal style bagels I'm used to from Segal's, but not quite as mouth-drying yucky as those bread-we've-shaped-in-bagel-form that you get from the supermarket or Costco.
