BAGELS!

So yes, it’s been over a month since I’ve been blogging.  Not to say that I haven’t been baking though.  I just haven’t been blogging about my baking.  I am going to try and catch myself up with the recipes I’ve done.  On the plus side I am going to try to bake a lot more new things, because I am poor and can’t afford to buy them.  Like bagels! 

Yes, I made bagels.  I thought it would be a pain, but it really wasn’t.  PLUS, it made my house more humid because of the boiling water.  (My house is so dry it’s ridiculous!)  I took an online recipe from allrecipes.com, (awesome website!) and modified it.  White bagels that I made into whole-wheat bagels…of course, I know it’s not surprising.  At least this time they actually turned out good rather than my other recipes that haven’t.  Instead of 3 cups of white flour (which was actually supposed to be bread flour, but I only had all-purpose) I used 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, with ¾ cup of whole-wheat flour (this was all I had left L) ¼ cup of wheat bran, and a ¼ cup of wheat germ.  Surprisingly not too heavy, though I think they would have been better with more whole-wheat pastry flour, which is a bit lighter than normal wheat flour. 

One thing I thought was interesting was there was no fat in the recipe.  Is this normal?  Yes and no.  I looked up a few different recipes and some have a little and some have none.  After finishing my recipe, I think I would add a little oil or shortening to my next batch, because they were a little on the dry side.  Everything else in the recipe I followed, for the exception of making them mini bagels instead of full sized.  This recipe also said to make little balls, flatten them and make a hole in the middle with your finger.  No.  This is cheating.  You don’t make bagels this way!!  You roll out the dough in a rope shape and then twist the ends together to make a circle.  I guess if you make them the other way you wouldn’t have to worry about them coming undone.  I didn’t have this problem though.  Just make sure that when you twist the ends together that they are stuck well.

The boiling was the best part I think.  It’s also what makes a bagel, a bagel.  The boiling water is what creates that smooth chewy outside.  You only have to boil them for a minute before draining them on a paper towel and baking them.   Brush a little egg white on top to make them shinier and to stick on any toppings you would like.  I put sesame seeds on half of mine, because I don’t really like anything in my bagels, and sesame seeds were all that I had.  They puff up a little when you boil them and then a little more when you bake them, but still don’t end up much bigger than the size you make them.

I was okay with the end result.  They were a little on the heavy side as when as dry, so for next time I would use the pastry flour and add some fat to make them more moist.  I think it might also be fun to add some herbs and see how those turn out.