BBA#3 Bagel

This is certainly not your regular store-bought bagels -- they are big, plump and chewwwwwwwwwwwwwy!  (But, for the first time ever since I started BBA Challenge, I almost gave up halfway through the recipe.  Read on ...)

Lesson Learned #1 - start making bagel the day BEFORE you want to eat it!  I should have read the recipe thoroughly before getting started, but I did't.  So I had to get up at 6:30am on weekend in order to get these bagels ready in time for breakfast.  They are definitely worth it though.

So what is it that got me so close to giving up on this recipe?  The dough.  The recipe does say it is supposed to be a stiff dough.  But I didn't expect it to be so stiff that it almost broke our mixer - hence the picture below: hubby had to open up the mixer to find out the loosen screw in order to tighten it up before the mixer falls apart.  Fortunately, hubby was able to put the mixer back together and get it to work again. :)

So what's the problem the?  Well, it did take over an hour for hubby to trouble-shoot and fix the mixer.  So while hubby was busy working on the mixer, I thought I would manually knead the dough to get it to the windowpane stage.  Boy oh boy, was I wrong to think it would be easy to finish up the kneading part of it!  (Now I see why so many people are so excited to know "No-Knead Bread" exists.)   The recipe states it would take ten minutes of kneading by hand - well, it took me an hour to knead the dough as hard as I could and it was still far from passing the windowpane test.  I even took hubby's suggestion to divide the dough into two so that they are more manageable.  But, after an hour of kneading, the dough was still not ready.  Thank God hubby was able to get the mixer to work again so it did eventually help finish up the dough for me before I broke my arms (another 3 minutes in the mixer - so I guess I kneaded the dough for an hour only to get it halfway ready.)  For the first time ever I realized that our mixer has been under-appreciated for all these years ...

FYI: My arms are still sore from kneading the dough and my legs from standing two days after making these bagels.

By the way, I ended up with 13 bagels (measuring at 4.5 oz each).  They are easy to shape (as shown in the picture above - I figured the hole is big enough once my four fingers can pass through comfortably) and it didn't take long for the shaped dough to retard before they could be moved into the refrigerator.  Flavor wise - I made seven with sesame seeds (my favorite), four plain, and two cinnamon sugar (for my sweet loving hubby, of course!)

Conclusion:  These bagels have undoubtedly good chewy texture that can't be found in store-bough bagels.  However, the flavor seems a bit bland - it doesn't taste bad, just doesn't have much flavor (I did use malt powder as the recipe calls for.)  Also, they can dry out FAST if left uncovered, so be sure you store them properly in order to keep them fresh for a big longer.

Comments

[Phyl]

Nice job! Aren't you glad you didn't give up? I tried to make these in my KA the first time and realized bad things would happened if I continued, so now I knead them by hand. It is a workout. Luckily, it has never taken me an hour to knead the dough!

And just for the record, I have made these bagels all in one day without too much difference in taste/quality.

[Hindy]

Your bagels look wonderful! Good job!