Bagels!

This week's post is pretty late, not because I've necessarily been too busy.  I'm just feeling lazy after the holidays.  I baked my bagels last weekend, but I couldn't be bothered to actually blog about them until now.  In fact, I've procrastinated so much that today is the day to start my next recipe.  I'll try to be better in the future.

A cutaway of a finished bagel, showing the crumb

Before I begin, I should note that producing a good bagel is notoriously difficult, so I was a bit trepidatious from the start.  The recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice is for a traditional water bagel.  Some places (even some places in New York) will steam their bagels these days, because steaming is way more efficient at scale.   You can simply do all the bagels at once rather than having to boil them in batches.  That said, the steamed bagels are often not as good.  Boiling provides a massive hydration boost to the bagel's exterior.  The hydration helps open up the starch molecules in the flour, aiding in the formation of a nice, chewy exterior to the bagel.

The mere act of boiling the bagel doesn't guarantee a good result, though.  New York is known for particularly good bagels, but bakers argue incessantly about just why that is.  The common myth—that New York water has just the right mineral content to make the perfect bagel—is just that: a myth.  As a result, I knew going in that getting a good bagel was going to need good, old-fashioned precision.  It's probably going to require a bit of practice, too.

My new kitchen scale

In the precision department, at least, I was aided by a new kitchen accessory.  Jessica bought me a kitchen scale for Yule, and this is my first time trying to use it.  It seems to have worked fairly well.  I'll probably need more trials to figure out if it really makes that big of a difference.  I'll also need to work out the proper weights for my sourdough recipe so I can see what affect it has on a dough I'm more familiar with.  Nevertheless, I was really excited to take my first foray into high-precision baking.

Fortunately for me, The Bread Baker's Apprentice includes both volumetric and by-weight measurements in all of its recipes.  I used the by-weight formulas for the first time to prepare the bagel recipe.  The first stage in the process was to put together the sponge.  The sponge combines a small amount of commercial yeast with flour and water.  The yeasts wake up and start multiplying—and the flour can fully hydrate—before forming the final dough.

The sponge, after the yeasts have fully activated

Once the yeasts in the sponge are fully active, bagel dough needs a massive injection of high-gluten flour, which is distinct from bread flour.  This week's bake led me to learn something new about baking:  There is a difference between bread flour and high-gluten flour.  I've been buying and using high-gluten flour from my local grocery store for years now, because I can get it in an off-brand that's about 30% cheaper than bread flour from the nationally-known flour brands.  I'd always assumed that "high-gluten" was just a strange synonym for "bread flour" from this unknown brand.  Not so!  Bread flour is typically about 12% gluten by weight, but high-gluten flour is typically about 14% gluten.  Bagel dough needs to be extremely stiff to stand up to boiling, so it needs lots of gluten to provide structure.  That's why bagel recipes call for high-gluten flour.

All of this means that I'd been inadvertently helping out my whole wheat sourdough for years now by using flour with just a bit of extra gluten.  As a result, I can use a higher proportion of whole grain flour and still get a good structure in my loaves.  Cool!

In addition to the high-gluten flour, bagel dough also needs another unusual ingredient.  The recipe I used calls for barley malt.  It's sprouted barley that has been baked and milled to create a flour that contains both an unusually high proportion of simple sugars and some of the by-products of caramelization.  I couldn't find this on short notice, so I used the recommended substitute and replaced it with brown sugar.  I'm not sure exactly what effect this had on the dough, but the final product was tasty enough.

The shaped bagels, prior to the overnight fermentation

After mixing and kneading the dough, it's immediately shaped into the traditional rings and left to ferment overnight in the fridge.  Peter Reinhart insists that this step is essential, so I dutifully cleared out some space in my fridge for two baking sheets with half a dozen bagels each and covered them.

After the overnight fermentation, the cooking stages on the morning of day two went pretty quickly.  The entire process of boiling, topping and baking only needed about half an hour.  Unlike a more traditional bread, which requires lots of kneading and resting and shaping and rising before a long bake, most of the time-consuming stages in bagel-making take place on day one.  Despite the quickness of the process, however, this is where I hit my first big snag.  I neglected to oil the baking sheets prior to the stay in the fridge, so the risen bagels stuck to the sheets.  

I managed to get all of the bagels to let go of the baking sheet, but in the process, I deflated them a bit.  Some of the bagels also became a bit misshapen before going into the water, as you can see in the photograph, below.

Finished bagels, after coming out of the oven.

 For a first effort, I'm fairly pleased with the results.  Because I baked them myself, I had the chance to try these bagels fresh out of the oven and still warm.  I now understand why everyone says that a truly fresh bagel doesn't need to be toasted.  If it's still warm inside, a fresh, untoasted bagel is amazing.  However, I still abide by my personal preference that, if it's had time to cool, your bagel should be toasted.  Toasting comes close to getting the bagel back to that initial, pillowy interior that it has fresh out of the oven.

I will definitely be making bagels again.  They're fun to shape, and if you have the time the night before, they make a great, quick breakfast treat.  I'd also like to experiment with different topping and doughs.  As you can see, I made a basic sesame bagel this time, but I'd like to try putting together an "everything" topping.  I'd also love to try whole wheat, rye, and maybe even a sourdough bagel.

Bagel making seems like it will probably require more practice to get right than many bread recipes, but it also seems like it would definitely be worth the effort.

Next time (i.e. starting today), I'll be working on brioche.  I love the rich, delicate texture of a real, quality brioche bread, and I can't wait to see if I can manage on myself.  I hope you'll tune in later this week to see how it went.

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