bagels

If you live in New York like me you are spoiled as there is little doubt we have more bagel shops than anywhere in the country and most of them are very good.  I have tried bagels in other cities and usually they taste like a dense tasteless ball of dough.  Since I usually can get great bagels in my town I usually don't make them myself but I figured I would give it a go with a twist of course.

I decided to use my apple/blueberry yeast water to make a durum and high gluten flour starter.  I built this as usual in 2 steps as outlined below and I used King Arthur's Sir Lancelot high gluten flour along with some more durum flour in the final dough.

To shape the bagels I used the technique outlined in the excellent book "Inside the Jewish Bakery" which instructs you to form the dough into ropes and after cutting off the correct size piece to adjoin the rope together and roll out to seal.

I must admit I need more practice with this technique as some of my bagels ended up looking like a blind man-made them.

The end result was satisfactory.  The durum combined with the yeast water provided a nice slightly nutty flavor with a nice moist crumb.  I don't think I'm ready to open up my own bagel shop yet, but overall they made a nice toasted bagel with cream cheese.

Directions for Yeast Water Levain

Yeast Water Starter Build 1

60 grams Sir Lancelot High Gluten Flour (KAF)

60 grams Durum Flour (KAF)

120 grams Yeast Water Starter

Mix the flour and Yeast Water in a bowl until thoroughly combined.  Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for around 4 hours.  The starter should almost double when ready to proceed to build 2.

Build 2

Add ingredients below to starter from above and mix until incorporated.  Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 4 hours.

50 grams Sir Lancelot High Gluten Flour (KAF)

50 grams Durum Flour (KAF)

100 grams Yeast Water Starter

Main Dough Ingredients

400 grams Yeast Water Levain from above

450 grams Sir Lancelot High Gluten Flour (KAF)

100 grams Durum Flour

38 grams Vegetable Oil

25 grams Malt Barley Syrup

14 grams Seas Salt or Table Salt

170 grams Water at Room Temperature

Procedure

Mix the levain with the water to break it up in your mixer or by hand.  Next mix the rest of the ingredients in your mixer or by hand for 2 minutes on speed #1.  Change to speed #2 for 4 minutes and then place on your work surface and knead by hand for about 2 minutes.  You should not have to add any flour as the dough should be tacky  but pretty stiff and easy to knead.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover it.  Let it rest in the bowl for 3 hours.  After 3 hours turn the dough out onto your unfloured work surface and form the dough into a log shape.  Cut it into 2 pieces and roll each piece into a 2" diameter rope.  Let it rest covered for about 20 minutes to relax the dough.  Roll one of the ends of the rope into a strand about 8 to 10 inches long and wrap it around your knuckles and break it off with your thumbnail or a bench scraper.  Roll the overlapping ends against your work surface to seal the bagel.  You may need to spray some water on the surface to help roll and seal the bagels.

Place the bagels on a parchment lined baking sheet and cover with oil sprayed plastic wrap.  Place the bagels in your refrigerator overnight to develop the maximum flavor.

The next morning heat your oven to 460 degrees F. while at the same time prepare a large pot of water and bring to a rolling boil.  Add another 25 grams of malt syrup to the boiling water (note this is not listed in the total ingredients).  Next add 2-3 bagels at a time in the boiling water and remove them once they start to float.

Place the bagels on a cooling rack and immediately add your toppings of choice.  I used toasted onions, poppy seeds, toasted garlic mix and parmesan cheese mix.

Once the oven has come up to temperature, place the bagels on your baking sheet again and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until they are nice a brown.

Remove them from the oven when done and let cool on a rack for about 20 minutes or longer before diving in.

Cosmo Waiting Patiently for a Bagel

We just love the authentic, taste texture and chew of Stan Ginsberg’s Favorite Bagels that are authentic and just plain delicious any way you want to eat them.  We keep messing with the grains and starters to get what we want in our favorite bagels.

 All the whole grains are in the starter, a new thing we are trying out lately.  The grains were home milled rye, WW and Kamut and make up 17% of the total flours.  We also included a little less than 10% of roasted potato left over from Beer Can Chicken. 

 As usual with out take on bagels, there is some barley malt, red and white malts were included to improve the color and taste of the bagels along with adding the enzymes that break down carbohydrates and starch into sugars that the yeast and bacteria can use to do their thing gas and sour wise.

 We have been using a combo YW and SD starter to build the levains for recent bagels and we did so again this time.  We get a nice moist open crumb with a slight SD tang using a combo starter.

From left to right front - Chia seeds, Sesame, white sesame and Multi - all the prvious plus, black sesame, kosher salt, basil and  nigella seeds.

 We used exactly the same method as last time and baked the bagels off in the mini oven using Sylvia’s steam developed for it.  Our change from Stan’s method is to proof the bagels after forming for 1 hour before refrigerating and we retard them for 24 hours before boiling them.

 These are now our favorite go to bagel and have now met our taste, texture, chew and color criteria.  They are just delicious.  Now there is not reason to go to NY for bagels anymore and it sure is cheaper too.

 Method

We built the YW and SD levain together over (2) 3 hour and (1) 2 hour build and then refrigerated them for 48 hours. Home ground whole wheat berries were used for the starter and accounted for all the whole grains in the final dough.

The flours, salt, mashed potatoes and malts were autolysed for 3 hours and hand mixed into the levain. The stiff dough was kneaded for 10 minutes by hand and then allowed to rest, ferment and develop for a whopping 15 minutes covered with plastic wrap on the counter.

The dough was them divided into (10) 122g pieces, folded into balls and then into 12” tapered, from middle to end, ropes. The ropes were rested for 10 minutes and then formed into bagels by the ‘over the knuckles’ method where the ends were rolled on the counter to seal them together.

The bagels were placed onto a parchment covered and corn meal sprinkled cookie sheet, covered in plastic wrap and refrigerated for 24 hours.

Latest $2 Goodwill purchase yesterday at half price.  It's a 901 - just perfect for an oval shape bread or nice baked chicken. 

After removing the bagels from the fridge, they were immediately simmered for 30 seconds a side in 1 gallon of water with 1 T of barley malt syrup and 1 tsp of baking soda. The wet bagel bottoms were placed on a kitchen towel for 5 seconds after coming out of the water, dunked in the topping of choice and then placed on parchment paper sprinkled with semolina which was on the top cover of the mini ovens broiler.

The mini oven was preheated to 45o F with the rack on the bottom. A 1 cup Pyrex measuring cup with a rolled up dish rag, half full of water, was micro waved until the water boiled. Sylvia’s steaming method was then placed in the middle of the parchment paper between (4) bagels at the corners.

The bagels were steamed for 8 minutes with the heat being turned down to 450 F. At the 8 minute mark the steam was removed, the bagels turned upside down and the rack rotated 180 degrees. The Mini Oven was also turned down to 425 F, convection this time,  at the 8 minute mark too.  After an additional 4 minutes, the bagels were turned 18o degrees on the parchment – still upside down..

At 16 minutes total baking time the bagels were deemed done. They were nicely browned top and bottom and sounded like a drum when tapped on the bottom. They were moved to wire cooling racks until cooled.

Formula

We had some yeast water and SD Desem starter left over from our 'Bun Experiment' yesterday where we compared YW with SD in buns.  We were going to use them up with a combo starter to make the same buns but we have too many buns after yesterday.

From left: poppy and not your usual; nigella and basil seeds.

What we did not have was bagels so we used them up on some 15% WW bagels.  Our last bagel bake was a much higher percent whole grain SD bagel with sprouts.  They were delicious.  This bagel recipe was still based on Stan Ginsberg’s recipe he published on TFL and is more traditional in grains with the whole wheat being in the combo yeast water and SD Desem starters only.

These bagels are by far and away the best ones we have ever produced.  If you want NY Jewish Bakery Bagels - these are the ones you want to bake - thanks Stan.  The crust was nicely browned and blistered.  They came out of the oven crisp and went to chewy as it cooled.  The crumb was open and moist yet had just the right bite a bagel should have.  The taste was very good with a slight SD tang.  They were delicious, just cooled, un-toasted with cream cheese.  No toasting necessary at all.

Method

We built the YW and SD Desem starters separately over (2) 3 hour and (1) 2 hour  build and then refrigerated them both for 48 hours.  Home ground whole wheat berries were used for both starters and accounted for all the WW in the final dough.

The water was mixed with the 2 starters to liquefy them.  The rest of the ingredients were added and mixed by hand to incorporate.  The dough was kneaded for 10 minutes by hand and then allowed to rest, ferment and develop for 2 hours covered with plastic wrap on the counter.  The dough doubled over that time.

The dough was them divided into (10) 128 g, folded into balls and then into 12” tapered, from middle to end, ropes.  The ropes were rested for 10 minutes and then formed into bagels by the ‘over the knuckles’ method where the ends were rolled on the counter to seal them together. 

The bagels were placed onto a parchment covered and semolina sprinkled cookie sheet, covered in plastic wrap and refrigerated for 20 hours.

After removing the bagels from the fridge, they were immediately simmered for 30 seconds a side in 1 gallon of water with 1 T of barley malt syrup and 1 tsp of baking soda.  The wet bagel bottoms were placed on a kitchen towel for 5 seconds after coming out of the water and then placed on parchment paper sprinkled with semolina which was on the top cover of the mini ovens broiler.

The mini oven was preheated to 500 F with the rack on the bottom.  A 1 cup Pyrex measuring cup with a rolled up dish rag, half full of water, was micro waved until the water boiled.  Sylvia’s steaming method was then placed in the middle of the parchment paper between (4) bagels at the corners.

The bagels were steamed for 8 minutes with the heat being turned down to 450  after 2 minutes at 500 F.  At the 8 minute mark the steam was removed, the bagels turned upside down, the rack rotated 180 degrees and placed in the upper position.  The Mini Oven was turned down to 425 F convection at this time.   After 4 minutes the bagels were turned right side up again, the rack was rotated 180 degrees and placed back in the lower position for an additional 4 minutes

At 16 minutes total baking time the bagels were deemed done.  They were nicely browned top and bottom and sounded like a drum when tapped on the bottom.  They were moved to wire cooling racks until cooled.

Our granddaughters, Naomi (6 years old) and Sasha (3 years old), have been staying with us for two weeks. Making bagels was in our contract. We saved this activity until just before their parents return, so they could have them fresh-baked. The parents return late tonight, so we made bagels today to bake for their brunch tomorrow.

Naomi had had an introduction to bagel shaping by her great Great Uncle, Glenn, a few weeks ago. She was a quick learner. Now, little sister wanted to make bagels too.

Sasha got to shape the first bagel, before going for her nap. Naomi provided support. 

Naomi really remembered everything Glenn had shown her. She needed minimal help - like keeping the board damp enough to give the dough some traction.

Naomi really shaped most of the bagels, but she did let me make a couple.

From the "It's never too late to learn" department: When she saw how much fun we were having, Grandma Susan had to grab a piece of the action. She received excellent instruction and did pretty well, for a beginner.

Since I had so much help with the bagels, I was able to get a couple bâtards of pain au levain baked this afternoon as well.

While they lacked something in symmetry, these were the best tasting bagels I've every baked. I used the Krakow Bagel formula from ITJB recipe testing. It is the same as the New York Bagel formula in the book, except it adds a 60 minute bulk fermentation step before dividing and shaping. I tried brother Glenn's flour mix - 25% KAF Bread Flour and 75% KAF Sir Lancelot Flour. Also, the bagels were eaten within an hour of baking. The crust was crisp. There was just the right amount of chewiness. The flavor was perfect, with a bit more sweet flavor than usual.

My apprentices each ate ate two whole bagels with cream cheese and cold smoked salmon. (Their parents wouldn't let them eat more.)

Naomi eating her "twisty bagel."

Sasha could hardly wait to eat her bagel

Sasha and Naomi's parents were given a copy of ITJB. I am pretty sure they will be baking bagels in Las Vegas.

David

David

After getting back from Houston where it rained cats and dogs, I had to bring it back to Phoenix since we have been dry for a year.  It has rained just about every day since returning.   It is monsoon but yesterday, we had to get nearly 1.5" of rain at home where we only get 7" a year.  The clouds were ominous.

Then they got orange in a pinkish way as the sun set.

Looking back to the sunset across the lake it was clearing for a nice sunset.

Nice to wake up to some home made bagels and mini English Muffins .