So I decided to go wild and make some bagels. I now realize while some authors caution people about bagels: they're really hard. A bunch of the mistakes I made were from attempts to alter the recipe. However, most of the problem was that I was simply not prepared for the difficulty of the boiling process. I tried to make a modified version of
Wild Yeast's Potato Peppercorn Bagels and a modified version of the whole grain bagels from Peter Reinhart's
Whole Grain Breads
.
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| Soudough Potato Peppercorn |
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| Spiked Sourdough Whole Wheat |
You can see that the bagels were not exactly perfect. I accidentally did not let the Potato bagels rise enough before they went in the refrigerator, and consequently there were very small and dense. I changed the whole wheat bagels so that they used sourdough starter spiked with 3/4 teaspoon of baker's yeast. I left them out for slightly too long and they overproofed. They became really wide and did not rise very much. However, they still taste fairly decent. I need to add more honey next time.
Maybe I'll try again some time in the next few weeks.
The whole wheat ones look professional to me. When are you starting your mail order business???
ReplyDeleteThe wheat bagels looked good in the photo (and tasted ok-- although they needed more honey or perhaps malt syrup) but they were really flat and wide. The other bagels were really dense. I will try the whole process again at some point, but I think I will stick to easier doughs for a while.
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