homemade bagels

I could have drowned in awesome bagels in the US. As a matter of fact, the bagels at Scratch were better than any bagel I had before – anywhere. Once home I knew I had to figure out how to make bagels myself, as bagels are rare (well not so rare but they are not that common) to find in Germany, and if you find some they’re usually not very good. This is the first try at a yeast bagel recipe. I will try sourdough bagels soon, as this – and lye – are probably the secret to Scratch’s bagels.

Yield: 8
Cuisine: USA
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 20 minutes
Inactive Prep Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

• 4 cups bread flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 3 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 30g / 1 oz fresh yeast  (or 2 tsp instant yeast)
• 1-¼- 1-½ cups warm water
• 10 g natron

Directions:

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in 1.2 cups warm water. Keep the remaining water aside.

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl. Then add yeast-water mix, olive oil and knead until the dough feels stiff. Add the extra water if it turned out really stiff. Knead with your standmixer for about 5 minutes. Plop the dough down onto the counter, and knead for about ten minutes, or until the dough is uniform and smooth. Cut the dough into 8 equal sized balls, and let rest for 10-20 minutes. Preheat your oven to 220°C / 425°F.

Now, take each of the dough balls and using two hands, roll it into a  snake. When the snake is longer than the width of your two hands, wrap it around your dominant rolling hand.  Now take the two overlapping ends, and use your palm to squish&roll these two ends  together. This will need a little practice before your bagels will look really even. Let your bagels rest at a warm place for about 20 minutes.

Bring a pot of water to boil, and line a baking dish with parchment paper. After 20 minutes, your bagels will have increased in size and look puffy. Add as many as you can into boiling water without them touching each other. Boil for about a minute or two, turn them over, and boil for another minute. Take them out a let dry for a minute and then roll them in your favourite topping. I love poppy seeds.  Once topped, place them on  baking tray. Add tray to the oven, bake 10 minutes, flip the bagels over, bake for another ten minutes; and there you go!

Optional:

If you want to make lye roll styled bagels (as the one with the sea-salt in the picture), add 10g natron into 1l /33 oz water and boil the bagels in there. If you sprinkle these bagels with sea-salt they will come close to Scratch’s sea-salt bagels (but their bagel is made with sourdough – an adventure I will tackle soon). You can top them with any other topping, too. In fact the lye makes the topping stick very nicely and the bagels obtain a rustic twist.

Source: adapted from: http://hubpages.com/

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