Bagels!

After our success with the bread we decided to dive right in and tackle bagels. My kids love bagels. I usually buy frozen Lender's ones, but, wouldn't fresh ones be somehow nicer? Well, these enquiring minds wanted to know.

Here's what we've learned so far.Bagel dough and bread dough are pretty similar. Both contain flour, yeast, salt, a sweeetener (we use honey but sugar or maple syrup are also good), butter, and a liquid. The 3 main differenced between our bread recipe and our bagel recipe (both by the famous Mr. Bitman) are

• our sandwich bread dough uses milk, our bagel dough recipe called for water
  
• the bread uses 2.5 tsp yeast per 3.5 cups of flour and the bagels only need 1 tsp per 3.5 cups of flour
  
• the bread uses 1Tb of sweetner, the bagels take 2Tb
  

Like the bread dough recipe I use, the bagel dough can be (and is, at our house) made in the food processor. It is so simple and quick, you can have dough in about 4 minutes. Bagels, though, take a while.

After you make the dough, you have to let it rise. Punch it down, let it rest 10 minutes, and then separate it into little equal balls of dough. I used 3.5 cups of flour, which gave me 28 ounces of dough. So, 14 little balls, er, bagels-in-waiting.



Next step. Form the little balls into little bagels, either by flattening them and poking a hole in the center, or by rolling them into little logs and joining the ends to make circles.


Then-you guessed it-let them rise again. For about 30 minutes.

Next comes the famous 2 stage cooking process, boiling and baking. Bring a pot of water to a full boil. Drop a few bagels in, watch them sink and then float to the surface.
Cook for one minute, flip, cook one minute longer.

Then, fish them out of the water and place them on a rack to dry.

This step will make the bagels puff up and take on a funny consistency that is firmer than the dough but also sort of gluey. Don't panic. This is also what makes the bagels chewy.

Last but not least, put the bagels onto a cookie sheet and slide them into a PREHEATED 400 degree oven. I'm capitalizing to EMPHASIZE this, because otherwise you will do MORE waiting around. You've had plenty of time to preheat while you were rising, forming, and boiling! Bake for 20-25 minutes, and enjoy.

Which we did. My kids all happily tucked into the bagels, with butter and cream cheese. I heard "Delicious!"
and "Oh Mama, these are so good!" and "Thank you!" My favorite compliment, though? "These taste just like real bagels".

Why yes, they do. And they look like them too.