Bagels

Martin's Bagels

Last week I made bagels. 

There seems to be an upsurge of home baking during this pandemic, especially at our house.  

(Have I shown you the Cherry Cream Cheese Danish Braid I made a couple of weeks ago?)

Who hasn't noticed the huge number of videos on Facebook and Instagram of people showing how to make any number of wonderful things, right in our own kitchens. And who hasn't noticed the empty grocery store shelves - never mind toilet paper, there's no flour, not much sugar and no yeast - as well as all the people complaining about the lack of baking supplies on social media.

As long as I'm not trying to cook for a crowd, with a deadline, I find kitchen activity meditative - I just get in a groove - as well as an outlet for creativity. I especially enjoy baking something I've never tried before.

Actually, I have tried making bagels once before, maybe 25 years ago and I only recall that they turned out rock-hard and almost inedible. But last week I saw Martin Philip and his lovely young son Arlo demo the making of bagels in his own kitchen on IGTV. And thought: I can do that!

      

Martin, as you can see, in addition to being head baker at King Arthur Flour, is a cookbook author. He and Arlo are creating regular videos on IGTV - besides bagels, so far, there are pitas and doughnuts, tortillas and bread, with more to come. Arlos's sister, Anthem is the videographer, and the series is surely a learning experience for both of them while schools are closed.

Martin made the bagel process seem, not quick and easy, exactly, since it's a 2- or even 3-day event, but interesting. So I tried my hand at it, using Martin's recipe which you can find on the King Arthur Website.

King Arthur, by the way, is a large Vermont-based US flour mill that apparently has flour in stores around that country, at least whenever there isn't a global pandemic going on. 

It seems that the shortage of flour products in stores is due to a fault in distribution, not processing, so shortfalls should soon be resolved, as long as shoppers don't binge-buy. I have never seen King Arthur products for sale in Canada but I note that they have a very interesting website with tons of fantastic recipes and tips as well as videos that could keep us occupied into eternity. Of course, Canadian wheat/grain is the best in the world, so why would we even want to buy from the US! I do think our flour companies could take a page from King Arthur in promotion and customer relations.

Anyway, on to the bagel process. I'm not putting the recipe here - if you want it, click on King Arthur Website.

First, the poolish, a mixture of flour, yeast and water that is mixed together and then left to itself for 2 - 8 hours. I left mine overnight. And in the morning, it looked like this.

Doesn't that look amazing??

The next morning I added more flour, yeast and salt along with more water to make what is described as a soft shaggy dough. It then went into the fridge overnight and the next morning looked like this. See that bubble about to pop? 

By the way, all the measuring I did was with the new digital kitchen scale that I recently "purchased" using AirMile Rewards 😊👍

This is it: 

It's lightweight and versatile, with a tare function that makes it easy to add each ingredient right into the bowl, choosing from grams, lbs, and even millilitres or fl. oz. for liquids. My kitchen has been revolutionized! Also, I can now easily bake recipes from the rest of the world. 

On the second morning, the dough came out of the fridge and sat at room temp for a couple hours before I formed the bagels. Forgot to take a photo of that process in my excitement about the next step which was to boil them in this odd-looking mixture of water, salt and molasses. The recipe called for malt barley, not a staple in my kitchen so I substituted, as suggested, molasses. 

  

Into this boiling mixture and after one turn, about 90 seconds later, the infant bagels were dipped into a plate of sesame seeds on their way to a parchment-lined baking sheet, scattered with cornmeal and into a very hot oven - 475F for 20 minutes.

Here's the proud moment. They were toothsome and crunchy on the outside with a soft interior. Edible and delicious! It was a baking adventure!