When I found my brother-in-law was making bagels a thousand miles away, I got hungry. I had tried making bagels some eleven years before, but they hadn't turned out to my satisfaction, and they seemed too much work, so I hadn't tried again. But if my brother-in-law could make them, I figured, then I certainly could!
I found a recipe on-line which seemed to have good reviews and which was pretty simple. So with renewed hope, I set out to try again.
Ingredients:
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 Tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 package active dry yeast (a little less than a Tablespoon for my yeast)
1 2/3 cups warm water (lukewarm--about 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit)
2 Tablespoons margarine, softened
Have 1 Tablespoon sugar and 2 teaspoons salt ready to add to the water for boiling.
First, mix the dough according to standard methods of mixing yeast doughs. This recipe is actually sized so a bread machine can mix it for you, if you have one, which I don't, you can skip ahead to after the rising part. I use my stand mixer usually, so my description follows that process. If you have a stand mixer and need more details on mixing, you can check here, and if you don't have a stand mixer, try here.
Start by dissolving the yeast in the water with the sugar. While waiting for the yeast to dissolve, put the salt and a couple cups of flour into the stand mixer bowl. Mix them a little with the bread hook and add the margarine. Add the yeast mixture when it is dissolved, and continue mixing in flour until the dough cleans up the side of the bowl. Allow the bread hook to knead the dough for a few minutes.
Add a little oil to the bowl, turn off the mixer, and remove the bread hook and bowl from the stand mixer. Take out the bread hook, swirl the dough around in the bowl to spread the oil around, and flip it upside down.
Cover, and allow to rise in a warm place until about doubled in size.
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| This is a little more than doubled, but I was busy making aloo paratha while it was rising. |
Punch down the dough, cover, and let sit for another 15 minutes. It's a good idea to get your pot or skillet for boiling water started sometime during this time. Add the 1 Tablespoon sugar and the 2 teaspoons salt to the water.
(Welcome back, bread machine users. Hope your water is boiling.)
You'll want your oven ready at 375 degrees Fahrenheit when you are finished with the boiling process, so it's a good idea to go ahead and preheat it when you start shaping the dough.
Divide the dough into 12 pieces. Shape 3 pieces into smooth balls. (Smooth? How do I do that? I'm going to have to do some more research on this.) Poke a 1-inch hole in each. (I poked it initially with the end of a wooden spoon, then used my fingers to stretch the hole larger.)
Here they are after stretching.
Drop the bagels into the simmering water and cook on medium low heat for 3 minutes. Turn the bagels and cook 2 minutes, then turn again and cook for 1 minute more.
Remove the bagels from the water and drain on towels. Repeat for the rest of the dough.
This was the point at which I dubbed my bagels "alien bagels". The shape was awful, and the texture looked like something you really didn't want to view or touch right after dinner. (Who knew half-cooked bagels might look like some sort of odd gelatinous substance?)
I found that 4 bagels fit fine in my pot without crowding, so next time, I'll probably just boil them in groups of 4 and save myself some time.
Place the bagels on a greased baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes. Remove from the sheets and cool. If you want, before baking, you can mix 1 egg white and 1 Tablespoon water, brush it on the bagels, and sprinkle on sesame, poppy, or caraway seeds. I was going for plain this time, so I didn't.
It took a lot longer than 25 minutes for my bagels to develop anything which looked like browning, and they didn't brown as much as I really wanted, so I think next time, I will raise the temperature.
I wasn't impressed with how they looked, and I wasn't impressed with the texture and such when I tested a not-quite-cool one. But the next morning, when my husband ate one while heading out the door, he came back and commented, "They might be alien bagels, but they sure taste good!" The texture was much better than it had been the previous evening, so maybe they just needed to sit overnight and completely cool.
All in all, they were a success with the family, especially my husband, who liked the texture better than store-bought bagels. I am not completely satisfied with the results, so I think I will be tweaking this a little more--doing some research on the proper shaping of bagels and raising the baking temperature, for starters.
Then, perhaps, I will manage to produce something which looks like it belongs on Earth.
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