Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Bagels: A Fun, but Questionable Enterprise

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.
Soudough Potato Peppercorn

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.

2 comments:

  1. The whole wheat ones look professional to me. When are you starting your mail order business???

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  2. The 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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