Making bagels...

In my attempt to keep grocery expenses down this month, I am making my own bagels each week. I was a little leery of doing this because my first attempt at homemade bagels a few years back was less than satisfactory. The first week I made plain bagels and last week I made cinnamon raisin. We have decided that we prefer the cinnamon raisin bagels the best. I will show you how I did it and then give the recipe.

After the dough sat in a bowl and doubled in size for about an hour. I divided the dough into 8 balls of dough. Then I rested the balls of dough for about 5 minutes. After resting for 5 minutes, I stuck my thumb in the middle of the dough ball, and then I spun the dough around my thumb to make the hole. The hole really does need to be about 2 inches across otherwise you will have bagels with no middle hole. This happened to me the first week that I made bagels.



Once the bagels all have their center holes they need to rest 10 minutes. Before I started making holes in the middle of the dough balls, I set a pot of water to boil on the stove. I do add some honey to the water. After the water is boiling, I start dropping bagels into the water 2 at a time and poach them for 1 minute turning over once or twice during the poaching.



After poaching the bagels, I drain them on a rack set over a jelly roll pan.




Then I move the poached bagels to a cookie sheet with parchment paper. I would have liked to put an egg white wash on my bagels, but I was tight on eggs and didn't want to give up one to the bagels. I think they would look better with the egg white wash.



Here are the baked bagels.



Some are nearly perfect looking.



Others...not so much.



Here is the recipe I used.

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 Tbsp. dry yeast
1/4 cup honey
1 Tbsp salt (yes, you really need this much)
2 cups unbleached white flour
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
8 cups of water for boiling
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp water

Add ins...1+ Tbsp cinnamon and 1/2 + cup raisins or whatever you think you might want.

1. In stand mixer, mix water, honey and yeast. Let stand 3 minutes.

2. Add half of the flour to the yeast mixture and combine. Add salt and then remaining flour. Add the remaining flour a little at a time until the dough pulls away cleanly from the sides of the mixer.

3. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes in a Bosch mixer, you may need a little more time to make a smooth, firm dough ball. I added the cinnamon and raisins toward the end of the kneading time. Place dough in bowl, cover and let rise to double.

4. Punch down dough. Divide and shape in 8-12 balls. We make 8 because we like larger bagels. Allow to rest 5 minutes.

5. Bring water to boil. Make a hole in each ball of dough and pull open about 2 inches, amking a bagel shape. Placethe shape dough on a cookie sheet (I use a greased flexible cutting board) for 10 minutes.

6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Drop 2-3 bagels at a time into boiling water for about 45 second to 1 minute.

7. Drain poached bagels on a wire rack. Mix egg white and water; brush tops with egg white mixture and top with optional toppings, if using (seseame seeds, poppy seeds, etc.). Place bagels on greased (or parchment papered) baking sheet.

8. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes. You can flip them over once if you are not putting additional topping on them or you can turn them on the sheet if you are using topping. I, however, did neither of these. The original recipe said to bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

Tips: Making the dough balls as round as possible seems to help shape the bagels. Keeping the bagels round also keeps the water from sitting in nooks and crannies on the bagels.

Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jennie