Sunday, March 9, 2008
Making Bagels
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A co-worker came in one day, sat down, pulled out a bagel, toasted it, slathered it with some cream cheese and proceeded to make some almost obscene sounds with each bite. I noticed that the bagels looked a little "different" than what I was accustom to seeing. I asked her where she got her bagels. "My husband makes them for me sometimes," she said. Makes them for her? Makes them? But I thought bagels were one of those secret, secret recipes and the method was only known to those special folks in New York that had been inducted into the secret society of bagel bakers?? The last really good bagel I had was in 1979 when I was still in high school and slept over at a friends house one weekend. I had forgotten until recently that she had said that having bagels for breakfast was a rare treat because her father would bring them back from a business trip in New York. These bagels were dangerous! Getting a knife through them to start cutting was taking life and limb into your own hands. The knife would invariably slip at each attempt to start a cut. I remember those toasted bagels being absolutely delicious!! I had never considered even looking for a recipe, much less believed that I could find one that was genuine. Boy, did I learn how wrong I was! Ever reliable Google provided me with a plethora of links in response to my query of "how to make bagels". My first link clicked was my last. I just liked the authors writing and I felt immediately confident that the method was genuine. However, I recently clicked on another link and will be trying a slightly different recipe and one that claims to be "Real Honest Jewish Purist Bagels" I'll provide both links at the bottom of this post. :-) Today I want to share my morning of making bagels. Last night I mixed the dough, let it rise for the 2 hours, shaped the bagels and put them in the fridge. All according to the recipe I was using. When I got up this morning I turned the oven on to 450F to preheat. Took out my water bath canner and filled it with water and the baking soda. The longest part seems to be waiting for the water to boil!! Once it finally started boiling. I took out my tray of bagels.  I put 5 of them into my pot of boiling water.  Boiled them for 2 minutes on one side and then turned them over to boil for 1 1/2 minutes more. Watching them boil you see them turn with just a bare blush of golden color and puff up a bit. Not a lot, just enough to give you a glimpse of what is to come. After they're done boiling I put them on a rack to drain for one minute.  They're lumpy and bumpy and full of personality. After their minute of draining, they're ready to go into the oven. You want that boil and blast of heat to create the crunchy & chewy outside and soft delectable inside. The baking sheet is dusted with a corn meal and flour mixture. Let me tell ya, if you don't have a good layer of it the little buggers stick like glue to the sheet!  Into the oven they go! I have a terrible oven so I had to make time adjustments so that I didn't end up with over baked bagels. After a while I have a nice pile of bagels with a husband circling like a shark waiting for the half hour to pass before he can pile on his cream cheese and take a bite...making almost obscene sounds with every bite. Ahhhh....success. :-)  How to Make Bagels: By: Jim Berman Real Honest Jewish Purist's Bagels: by Johanne Blank Eat up!! No reason to toast these either!! |
Comments
Sunday, March 9, 2008 - Untitled Comment
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Posted by Sunday, March 9, 2008 - Untitled Comment
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Posted by Thursday, March 13, 2008 - Wonderful!
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Posted by Kim!