I may never buy bagels again!

I recently got a copy of Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads.  For those who are bread-obsessed, it is a great book that picks up where he left off with the Bread Bakers Apprentice, full of recipes with whole-grain goodness!

I’ve made a couple of loaves of the basic whole wheat boule, but was hankering for something a little different the other day.  I had whole wheat sandwich loaves on the go, and had made up a batch of Dave’s Sin Dawgs, and had about 8 or 9 cups of Red Fife flour left, so I figured, why not tackle bagels!  Real, Montreal-style bagels, the kind you boil before baking.

Using Peter’s method, this is a multi-stage process that you need to do over 2 days.  It sounds complicated, but most of the time involved is waiting for delayed fermentation.  The recipe is in the book (sorry, not available on-line anywhere!).  The timing worked out well, as I was baking the other items at the same time as assembling the components for the bagels.

The afternoon before, I made the soaker, which includes barley malt extract (they won’t taste the same without this!), and a biga, which is a very lightly yeasted dough, about the same hydration level as the final bagel dough.  Both sat in the fridge overnight, with the biga fermenting very slowly.

The next day, I took both out of the fridge, cut them up in small pieces, and mixed together with instant yeast and water.  I added a small amount of flour and kneaded together for about 4 minutes or so.  You could do this in a machine, but the dough is surprisingly supple at this point — I did the entire thing by hand.

The bagels are super easy to form — just roll into ropes and join together into a circle.  While they were resting, I brought the water to a boil, and added about 2 teaspoons or so of baking soda.  Once they are plopped into the water, the float back up to the surface pretty quickly.  The residual moisture on the outside of the bagels helps you stick seeds of your choice on, plus it helps create a nice moist oven, perfect for great crust!  Next time I may go for egg white, to make them extra shiny.

These baked in a very hot oven, for about 20 minutes.  The texture is great!  Nice and firm, yet not too dense, with a nice crumb.  The crust is nice and chewy, and with the red-fife wheat, the taste is great!  Way better than any I’ve bought!  I may never buy bagels again!

If you are a baking geek, I highly recommend Peter’s Book — lots of explanation about the how’s and why’s of the techniques, leaving lots of room for modifications along the way.