My First Attempt...

Bagels are expensive in NZ ($2-3 each if you buy them from the bakery, not much less if you want the gross supermarket ones that taste wrong) plus I like my baked goods to be of the super wholemeal kind, so today I made my first attempt at cooking bagels.


I got my original recipe here, but changed it a little, so I'll write it down here too:

4 cups of wholemeal flour
1 heaped tablespoon brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
1 1/2 tablespoons of canola or rice bran oil
1 packet (about 2 teaspoons) of dry instant yeast
1 1/2 cups of warm water

extra flour
seeds for the toppings, such as:
pumpkin seeds
sesame seeds
poppy seeds
sunflower seeds
...or any other kind of small edible seeds you may have

I read that it is also good to put sugar in the water, and either baking soda or even lye (?!) to help the sugars form on the outside of the bagel, making it chewy and delicious on the outside. So to the boiling water I added one heaped teaspoon of brown sugar and two teaspoons of baking soda.

Recipe:
To make the dough, mixed all the dough ingredients together, knead for 10 minutes, then cut the dough into 12 little buns and let them sit for about half an hour until they are doubled. After that time, roll them out and made them into loops, then let them sit for another 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 210ºC. Boil a big pot of water, with baking soda and sugar in it (not sure if these things did anything to help the bagels, but I don't think they hurt them any!) And let each bagel cook for 2 minutes in the boiling water, then flip them over and cook for another minute on the other side.

Remove from the water, cover in seeds, bake for 10 minutes each side on a floured baking tray or rack, wait a while for them to cool, then eat!

More useful info on bagel cooking is available here.