I thought I made great bagels, but I just modified my recipe to use
sourdough and they are even greater now--lighter but still very chewy.
Here's my recipe: Don't try to double it, if you value your mixer.
2 cups frothy, bubbling starter (the consistency is a thick batter, not
runny)
1 Tbsp (or 2 if you like a maltier taste) malt syrup (from the homebrew
supplies)
12 oz (3 cups) KA Special For Machines flour (if you have stronger flour,
skip the gluten)
2 Tbsp gluten
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt (you could use 2 tsp)
1/3 to 1/2 cup lukewarm water
Put the starter in the bowl of a heavy duty mixer with dough hook. Drizzle
in the sticky, gooey malt syrup. Mix thoroughly at slow speed. Mix together
the flour, gluten and salt.
Add to the starter mixture and mix at slow speed until it is a shaggy mess.
Add 1/4 cup water while mixing; keep adding more a little bit at a time
until the flour is almost all incorporated. Raise speed a notch and add a
little more water as necessary to make a stiff, plastic dough. The dough
will weigh 2 pounds when ready.
Turn out on your kneading surface and knead until completely smooth. Little
or no flour should be required to keep it from sticking. Form into a ball
and let it rest, covered with a floured towel for about 15 minutes. Keep the
dough you are not working on covered with the towel while you cut the ball
in half, then quarters and eighths. You will have 8 equal triangular bits of
dough. Keep them covered while you take out one at a time and shape it
into a ball. Put that one back under the towel and do the next one. After
all the balls are shaped let them rest while you prepare the pan or pans
they will rise in.
I use two STRAIGHT SIDED 9 inch cake pans which I can stack without the top
one nesting into the lower one. This is because of limited horizontal space
in my refrigerator.
You could use one large rectangular pan or baking dish, just so it has sides
about 2 inches deep. Dust the bottom with about a tsp or so of semolina. And
have some plastic wrap ready to cover it.
Shape the balls into bagel shapes. You can do this by rolling them out into
ropes about 10 or 11 inches long, without tapering the ends, then
overlapping and pinching the ends and rolling against the kneading surface
with your hand in the hole until it is well sealed and uniformly thick. I
find this tedious and prefer to poke a hole in the center of the ball and
stretch it into shape. This makes less perfect looking bagels, but once they
are covered with a topping, no one is the wiser. If I were baking them
plain, I would use the rope method.
Place each in the pan(s), leaving plenty of space between them. You don't
ever want them to touch as they rise because it will be difficult to cut
them apart without deflating and misshaping them. Cover the pan tightly with
plastic wrap so it will never touch the bagels.
Refrigerate for 12-15 hours. They will not appear to have risen much at all.
Remove pans from fridge and leave them, covered, in cool place for another
couple hours, until they are puffy. To test for readiness, drop one in a
bowl of cool water. It should float. If not, wait longer and test again.
Meanwhile, prepare your boiling water; preheat your oven, with tiles or
stone, to 450 degrees; and prepare your toppings. You will need at least
three inches of rapidly boiling water in a large pot and a skimmer or flat
strainer, also cake racks and a peel.
Put your toppings in soup bowls. I like to use sesame seeds with a pinch of
kosher salt. A mixture of sesame, a pinch of kosher salt, a little poppy
and some sunflower seeds is good.
You can also add caraway, fennel, cumin, whatever; or start with one and add
others after dipping some bagels so you end up with a variety. The seeds
will stick easily to the freshly boiled bagels. Onion and/or garlic topping
needs to be handled differently, more about that later.
I boil one at a time; any more creates the danger of over boiling. Drop one
bagel into the boiling water and press it under the water with the skimmer.
Boil for 20 or 30 seconds, just until the dough becomes a little puffy.
Remove with the skimmer and flip it into the bowl of seeds top side down. I
use a chopstick in the hole to remove the bagel otherwise I end up with
burnt and sticky fingers. Place the bagel on the cake rack. When all are
boiled, wait a minute or two for the last ones to dry a little. Steam the
oven while you're waiting.
Then transfer them all to a semolina dusted peel for deposit onto the tiles
or stone. Bake for about 15 minutes. Remove with peel and cool on racks.
For onion topping: Thinly slice an onion or two and cut into little pieces,
not too long, but not chopped or square either. Saute in a little olive oil
until soft but not brown. Mix with as much poppy seed as you want. Just
before topping the bagels, add a little kosher salt. I make this topping
right after I put the dough into the refrigerator and let it sit out to dry
a little during the 12 hours the bagels are in the fridge. Because of the
oil, the onions won't stick like seeds do; so pat the onion topping onto the
bagels while they rest on the racks (after boiling and before baking.)
Blueberry bagels could be made by adding chopped DRIED blueberries to the
flour. I think 1/2 cup would be right. I have not tried this.
The non-sourdough version:
1 pound King Arthur Special For Machines flour
2 Tbsp gluten
1 1/2 or 2 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
1 or 2 Tbsp malt extract syrup (or mix dry malt extract with the flour)
Mix dry ingredients. Dissolve malt syrup in the water, then dissolve yeast
in the malt/water.
Mix and shape as in sourdough recipe. Let rise in fridge 12 to 15 hours.
Remove from fridge and prepare boiling water, heat oven etc. Bagels should
be ready to boil by the time you are ready. They won't need the couple hours
of additional rising at cool room temp.
50-50 Whole Wheat version:
Same, but use half whole wheat flour and increase the water to 1 1/2 cups.
These all began with an article in Oct '97 Cook's Illustrated magazine by
Todd Butcher.
Don't let the length of this recipe deter you; it is really easy and not
time consuming at all.
Once you have gone through it, you will have the routine down. I can, and
probably have, done them in my sleep. I never buy bagels anymore, mine are
as good as, if not better than, the best bakery bagels (which by the way are
NOT Noah's.)
--Rosemary
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