Tweaking Our Bagels Recipe

I’ve come to the conclusion that you just cannot make a whole wheat bagel that has the same impact as a white bread bagel, or at least I can’t. I’ve tweaked our bagel recipe over and over again, and while the whole wheat variations come out okay, even good, they are never as good as the starchy white flour kind that you get in a killer bagel shop like Best Bagels. Healthier, but not as ethereal

However, we have made very good white flour bagels recently, and dare I say, a good substitute for the ones you buy. This is a good thing because not only are bagels expensive, but the bakery where we get them seems to operate on their own whims, and as I mentioned, was closed for three weeks for vacation. While I acknowledge that they work hard and are deserving a vacation, when you work in the consumer industry, you have to make some concessions to your whiny and self-absorbed customers, i.e., me.

So, with this in mind, I set about making starchy white flour bagels, and they came out really good. So good, in fact, that at one point I declared that we don’t need to buy bagels anymore, but trust me, that won’t last.

I found that there were a few key steps that deviated from the recipe we have and were only realized through a long and painful process of trial and error. The hard thing with bagels is you have to make a batch, and if you don’t like it, tough luck. You’re stuck with it.

The first thing was to ditch the diastatic malt. That stuff is totally overrated, or maybe it’s just that I don’t know how to make the most of it. Almost every recipe I’ve seen calls for it, it’s the “secret ingredient.” Next, instead of all purpose flour, use bread flour (King Arthur), which relieves you of the need to use the malt.

I’ve found it’s important to use a hot oven. They say to bake at 500 degrees, but our oven doesn’t go that high, so I’ve found 450 is enough. Finally, and for whatever reason they don’t recommend this, it’s key to let the dough rise. The recipes I’ve seen call for kneading the dough, shaping the bagels and then letting them rise. Including an intermediate rise step before shaping the bagels increases the bread quality without losing the precious chewy bagel quality. You know they’re ready when the float immediately upon hitting the boiling water. In the past, our bagels sank to the bottom and then slowly rose.

Anyway, our bagels came out great. Crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, just like the pros, sort of. Either way, we now have the capabilities, and as anyone knows, empowerment is a beautiful thing.

Until the next time, thanks for reading.