Bagel Recipe

Adapted from: Perfect Bagels from TIQA

Makes 6 bagels. I am using King Arthur Bread Dough flour, soft water, and ~66 deg. F room temp.

Day 1: make the "pre-ferment"/"sponge"; let rest overnight
Day 2: make final dough by adding flour, etc to sponge; let rest overnight
Day 3: form bagels, boil, then bake

Day 1 - make the sponge
Mix in bowl

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp yeast (Active Dry)
• 1/2 tbs of MALT syrup (the dark brown colors the bagels, see if can find light color, or powder?)
• 1.5+ cups room temp water

Cover bowl and put in fridge overnight. 

Day 2 - make the dough

Take bowl from fridge and let approach room temperature.

Mix in:

• 1.5 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp yeast
• 1 tsp of salt [I increased this and eliminated additional sugar from TIQA recipe]

Stir in the flour and kneed in more flour as needed until the dough is not tacky and smooth.  [5-10 minutes, by hand] [Actually: kneed in more flour until you cannot kneed in any more]

Let rest a few (~15) minutes then cover bowl and put in fridge overnight

Day 3 - make the bagels

Take bowl out of fridge. 

Put large pot of water on to boil vigorously (which takes ~1/2 hour on my crappy stove top)

Preheat oven to 500 deg. F (should be ready when water is boiling)

After bowl has warmed slightly (during the 1/2 hour) and after the night resting, dough will have expanded a bit. 

Cut dough into 6 equal sized pieces, roll each in a ball, puncture, and form into bagel. (Dough will be a bit sticky, so an alternative is to form bagels the previous night, which I have not tried yet. Since the dough is getting warmer and stickier I put some dough back in fridge to keep it cool while making the rings. Don't let dough get too warm or start rising, as then bagels will flatten and not boil well.

Take baking pan, cover with baking paper and put the formed dough rings on pan, about 1 inch apart. (This is just while waiting to boil them.)

Three at a time, boil the bagels for 45 sec each side. [they may drop to bottom then float back up at first]. Take out with slotted spoon. Roll them briefly on a towel to remove extra moisture. Then put them back on the baking pan.

Bake at 475, ~8 minutes then turn pan and do another 8 - 10 minutes. Should be golden brown and not burnt on the bottom.

Notes:  I made two errors: (1) not enough flour kneaded into the dough, so no dropping to the bottom of the boiling water and a "crumb" with oversized bubbles. (2) Baked at 500 for too long: burnt the bottoms. I will be more careful with the flour and put the baking pan on the top rack - monitoring more carefully at 450-475. They are delicious anyway....but not good enough.