Bagels – Part Dough

That title could be read Deux or Doh! However you see it, it took me 6 tries to finally get my bagels right. And well, they’re still not perfect but they are so so close now and definitely edible and tasty, unlike my first batch:

They look okay but they were hard as rocks. You can use them for weapons. The wheat flour taste was just overpowering and the blueberries were tasteless and they just didn’t rise much.

I didn’t give up. After asking advice on facebook and getting some good responses plus looking at advice on allrecipes.com I tweaked the recipe and changed how I baked them. So here’s what I did:

First of all, the website I originally went by for my recipe said you don’t need to soak the yeast because today’s yeasts work without presoaking it. Well, my bagels weren’t rising well so I decided to soak my yeast. This activated it so it can start rising even before it hit the flour. It also let me check to see if my yeast was good. If it gets all bubbly, then the yeast is good. If it doesn’t you need to throw it out and get fresh yeast because your dough isn’t going to rise. I was afraid my yeast was bad but it wasn’t.

Second, my aunt Carol mentioned dough enhancer. I’d never heard of it. Apparently it’s something you can buy and add to your dough to make it light and fluffy. She also said she couldn’t find it anywhere which made me think I wouldn’t be able to easily either. So I googled “dough enhancer” and found a recipe to make your own. It worked its magic so I definitely recommend it.

Here’s a blurb from the blog I found the recipe on – Chickens in the Road. It’s really neat to know what all these ingredients do for your dough:

Wheat gluten improves the texture and rise of bread. Lecithin teams up with the gluten to make bread lighter. Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) helps the yeast work better. Pectin adds moisture, as does the gelatin. The dry milk helps the dough relax (man, who needs uptight dough?), and the ginger is another yeast booster (you won’t taste it in the finished product). Most of these are also preservatives, so they help keep your bread fresh longer, and they are all natural.

One recipe will fill a little pint jar and you only need 3T per dough recipe so this jar and your leftover ingredients will go a long way. Pretty economical. I like that. :)

 

Plus I used brown sugar instead of white. I really don’t think the kind of sugar you use really matters. It’s all what you prefer – white sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses. What is the taste you’re going after?

The other thing I did differently was I let my mixer do the kneading. It does a better job than me anyway plus it made it easier to mix in the fruit. Someone said that you want to make sure to knead the dough really well, even over-knead it. So I let my mixer do its magic and let it go for the full 10 minutes.

The original recipe said to divide the dough and let it rest 10-20 minutes and then form it into bagels and let them rest 10-20 minutes and then start cooking them. So at most they get 40 minutes rising time.

Well, no. That’s not enough rising time. If I had fast rising yeast maybe that would have been okay.  But really the dough needs to rise until doubled, about an hour, before you divide it. My trick is to turn the oven light on in my oven before I start mixing the dough. By the time it’s ready to rise the oven is nice and warm but not too warm. One of the sisters at RS gave me that tip. I heart RS. :D

After it rises for an hour, divide the dough into 8-12 equal sized balls depending on if you want bakery sized bagels or small ones. I did 8. Then poke a hole in the middle and spin the dough around your finger to widen the hole. You may have to stretch it out some too depending on how elastic the dough is. The hole should be about 1 1/2 inch big. Try to make it nice and even all around and nice and smooth.

Put them on a lightly oiled pan and then back into the warm oven to rise again. 20 minutes is good but go for as long as 40 minutes if you want them really nice and fluffy.

There’s more magic! (Eeee! I was so excited when I tried this trick! haha!)

After they rise here’s the trick to making that nice smooth shiny skin. See, my first 5 batches I didn’t know this trick and I was tossing my bagels into the boiling water and having them come out bumpy and blistery and ugly. So, before you boil them, broil them 5 inches from the heat for a minute to a minute 30 making sure you watch them and don’t burn them. Broil both sides.

After they’re broiled, then boil them for a minute on each side and them let them drip dry.  The other trick for a nice skin is to put molasses or sugar into the boiling water. A tablespoon or two should do it. It sweetens the skin just slightly.

The bagels will already be shiny but if you want extra sheen, give them an egg wash.

Then bake for 20 or so minutes at 425. Until they’re as golden and the skin as crunchy as you like it.

My chant when I figured out the broiling technique was this:

broil – boil –egg – and bake…

haha! They turned out oooh so good!

Here is my 6th batch after I found and applied all these tips:

Aren’t they gorgeous? The holes for these were too small so they have belly buttons instead. My cousin says that’s good because then the jelly won’t fall through the hole. :)

The dough for that batch was nice and moist too. They are mixed berry flavored. I defrosted some berries, drained the juice but didn’t squeeze it out this time, added a little sugar to the berries and then mixed them into the dough. I’d decreased the water I used for the recipe by about 1/2 cup.

I had one for breakfast this morning and it was oh so yummy!

This morning I wanted to try cinnamon raisin bagels as well as experiment with the hole size.

Here they are just after rising:

So nice and fluffy!

And then baked:

So pretty! And they smelled so good too! I did broil them a little longer than I should have. Gotta watch the broiler! I am also thinking that the fruit filled bagels don’t need the egg wash. But I’m still deciding on that one.

This could become a new hobby. They are surprisingly easy to make. Especially now that I know how to and that dough enhancer? Where have you been? I’m going to use it in all my bread baking.

I’d like to try some of these other flavors:

poppy seed

blueberry (using fresh or frozen, unsqueezed blueberries)

jalapeno cheese – per Alan’s request

cranberry

apple cinnamon

and experiment with different flours too.

Here’s the basic recipe:

1 1/2 c warm water

1-2 T sugar

2 1/4 t yeast

1 c wheat flour

3 c white flour

3T dough enhancer

1 – 1 1/2 salt ( I don’t like salty bread so I use less salt)

1 T oil

If you use moist fruit then decrease your water by as much as 1/2 c depending on how much juice is in your fruit. If the dough is still too sticky even after that then add more flour until it’s good and easy to work with.

To do toppings, have a bowl of whatever topping you like – dried onions or garlic, poppy seeds, cinnamon sugar, sesame seeds and dip your bagels into it after they come out of the water bath. Or after you brush them with egg white.

I am so glad I persevered. Maybe we can save a little money on bagels in our home. The kids are a little unsure still. They’re used to the store bought blueberry ones but I think they’ll come around. Especially as these get even better.

Hey, if you try these, let me know how they turned out. :)