For the 4th of July I decided to try my hand at bagels. A few years ago the local bagel shop shut down and we haven’t had a good place nearby to get bagels, often settling for some not that great ones from the grocery store. So I finally said “just do it man.” After some online research on different recipes and methods, I settled on something that I could accomplish in one morning. In the end the whole process from start to finish took about 3 hours.
Ingredients
- 2 tsp active dry yeast
- 1 1/2 (1.5) Tbsp cane sugar
- 1 1/4 cup warm water +/- 1/4 cup
- 2 1/2 cup bread flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour (original recipe called for 3.5 cups bread flour but I substituted some whole wheat)
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
I started by adding the sugar and yeast to 1/2 cup of warm water and letting it sit for 5 minutes untouched. Then I mixed it up to incorporate it all together. This formed a collagenous mass (I had never before actually mixed up the yeast after letting it sit in water).
Next I mixed up the flour and salt. I created a well in the middle and added the yeast/sugar/water mixture and then added the 1 1/4 cup of warm water. The +/- 1/4 cup of water is dependent on your locale (temperature, humidity, etc). I ended up adding in an extra 1/4 cup of water but realized this was too wet so incorporated some flour back into it. This was a relatively dry dough and much easier to knead compared to my bread doughs. It’s really hard to say exactly how you know if it is too dry or wet but I’ve been working for dough long enough (really it’s not even that long) that I had a sense of how moist/tacky I needed the dough.
I then proceeded to knead the dough mixture for 10 minutes. In a lightly oiled (I used olive oil) bowl, I coated the dough ball and covered the bowl with a towel.
The dough was proofed in my oven (proof setting) for 1 hour.
The dough had actually proofed more than twice its original size, I punched it down and covered with a towel and let sit for an additional 10 minutes.
StewsCat 