A New York weekend

Two of my favorite "New York" foods are pizza and bagels. Joe has blogged about our pizza making attempts, and we're getting closer to making great pizza, but the crust still isn't quite right. With that almost success under our belts, I set out to learn how to make bagels. Joe, who grew up in New York, has a much more refined bagel palette than I do, but my lower standards mean that I'm often more satisfied with my bagels. I think he had his doubts about homemade bagels, but that just made me more determined to try it.

First, I did a lot of reading up on various homemade bagels. I settled on this recipe, which takes two days to make, but most of that time is inactive while your bagels hang out in the fridge. I liked this recipe because I had all the ingredients on hand and it has a longer fermentation period which helps the bagels develop more flavor. Also, it required much less kneading than other recipes, which is always a plus for me, since I do all my breadmaking by hand. In case you decide to make this recipe, I just used honey instead of the barley malt syrup.

Then I made the dough. It took about 15 minutes, then it went in the fridge for a couple hours. Then I got to take the dough out of the fridge and shape it into bagels. There are two methods I've read about for shaping the bagels: divide the dough, roll each piece into a ball, then poke a hole in the middle; or divide the dough, roll it into a rope and then wrap the rope around your hand. I chose the rope method. It required putting a little bit of water on the dough to seal it together. These bagels went back into the fridge and stayed there overnight.

I took the bagels out this morning to do the old boil and bake. They had to come to room temperature for about 90 minutes, then they went into the pot. This was my favorite part of the whole process.
Then they went into the oven and baked for about 16 minutes. I flipped them over a little more than halfway through. If you want to add toppings to your bagels, you do so after you boil them and before you bake them. I tried making a couple of salt bagels for Joe, but with kosher salt instead of sea salt or pretzel salt, since it was all we had on hand.
Mmmmmmm, bagels.
See, they even look like bagels!

Joe said the bagels are "good, but maybe they could be chewier. I thought the outside crust was good." Those of you who know Joe know that this is a glowing review, and I do agree with him about the chewier part. Overall, this recipe was easy to make, and it's sure to impress anyone when you tell them that you made the bagels.