I have made this recipe before, back when I discovered a version on my favorite blog for foodgawking, Smitten Kitchen. They were and still are the best bagels I’ve ever had. They’re chewy on the outside, fluffy and soft on the inside, and have an amazing flavor that pairs wonderfully with anything you smear (or schmear) on them.
Slow, Slow Rise
Unsurprisingly, Reinhart recommends a slow fermentation for bagels. I think this is actually a benefit rather than an impediment, because it makes it easy (relatively speaking) to have fresh, hot bagels for breakfast without having to wake up crazy early to make them. I made the dough and shaped the bagels the night before baking, which runs about the same way as making a loaf of French bread, except with the added step of separating and shaping the bagels at the end. The shaped, slightly-proofed bagels just chill in the fridge overnight and come out right before they’re ready for boiling and baking.
Bagels Fresh Out of the…Pot?
The idea of intentionally putting dough in water is kind of weird to me. Boiling water seems so violent, and bread dough can be such a delicate substance. In the end, I find it easier to think of bagels as weird giant noodles during the boiling stage. In fact, the method used here actually has a lot in common with another favorite carb of mine: ramen. As with ramen noodles, a good bagel should be nice and chewy. Adding something to make the water more alkaline helps the dough take on a chewier consistency. I added a tablespoon of baking soda to a big pot of water after it came to a boil. Science! The dough rings are boiled a few at a time, for a minute or two on each side, then pulled out and put back onto the baking sheet to get ready for the oven.
Topping It Off
This time I went with pretty simple toppings and didn’t do any dough mix-ins, because I was too lazy to do more prep than that. Marla Bakery here in SF has amazing salted bagels, so I followed suit and sprinkled a few of mine with sea salt. The sea salt stuck fine, but the bagels I topped with sesame seeds as well ended up mostly naked as soon as I started handling them at all. There’s gotta be a way to give the seeds more sticking power– maybe a light egg white wash or something to “glue” them down a bit? I ended up just scooping the fallen seeds off the cutting board and sprinkling the on cream cheese when I ate one, but the sesame seed ones were my favorite. They had a nuttiness and texture that really leveled up the flavor of the bagel overall.
Text[ural] Analysis
Fresh out of the oven these bagels were absolutely delicious, with a nice chewy exterior and a soft, fluffy center. But I did feel that they baked up a little less impressively than they did the last time I baked them. Some of them were very bubbly/porous inside. A lot of them seemed to flatten out a bit more than usual. I think this might have been a result of letting them sit out on the counter too long this morning before I boiled them (waiting for the oven to heat up and the water to boil). This also made them very soft and flexible, which is not the greatest when you’re trying to peel them off the waxed (and oiled) paper that they spent the night on. Next time I will most definitely use well-sprayed parchment paper AND leave the bagels in the fridge until a minute or two before they go into the pot. Long story short: a quick warm up is good, but getting back to room temperature seems bad.
Breakfast is Served
Back in college my roommate and I used to have bagel breakfast days, usually soon after a Costco run that resulted in a fresh haul of groceries. We loaded them up with cream cheese, tomatoes and lox. It was our decadent weekend breakfast of choice. I topped this weekend’s bagels with a similar spread of cream cheese, lox and a sprinkling of capers– maybe not creative or original, but pretty damn tasty all the same.