the bagel disaster

Today was bagel day despite the messy kitchen. I couldn't wait another week till the house was in a better order to start making the chewy bread; besides, my bagel was calling me.

I won't put up the ingredients and instructions here, it's way too long. This recipe for Real Honest Jewish Purist's Bagels was what I referred to for my bagel baking.

Being a little (ok, ok, quite to the core) anal about things, I followed the recipe close to clockwork. Started with "proofing" the yeast, mixed in the flour and salt into the foamy, beer-smelling liquid and started mixing it.

I used the entire 8 cups of bread flour, however my dough wasn't as stiff as I thought it'd be. (Ok guys, I know what you're thinking already, it's not that kind of stiff lah!) Then again, I've never made bread before, so I wasn't sure if it was the right stiffness in the first place. Hmmm. I decided to just stick to the 8 cups instead of putting more, in case it turned out too dry later on. Left the dough to rise for about 20 minutes. Wah, kembang quite a bit also. I was concerned that the bowl wasn't big enough, so I'd split it to 2 bowls instead.

Now, this was where the disaster started. Or rather, not putting enough flour into the dough before I'd let it rise. Thinking back about it, I'm pretty sure now that the dough was way too wet and not stiff (here we go again) enough. I should've put in more flour, or perhaps used less water in proofing the yeast. Oh well... too late now! The dough was still sticky and too elastic by the time it was ready to be bagel-ed.

I punched down and rolled the rather squishy dough into balls, poked a hole in the middle and let the bagels proof for another 10 minutes. Again, not knowing how much the dough will rise, the size of the bagels varied depending on how much dough I pinched out, ha-ha! Ada yang besar, ada yang kecil; ada yang just nice juga. Trouble was, they're all lumpy and sticky, and by the time they "proof" for another 10 minutes on the pans, the bagels looked quite deformed.

Next on the instructions - boil the bagels in simmering hot water. I carefully lifted the bagels off the pans, but they stretched out of shape when I peeled them off. And after boiling, they looked even more ugly! Nothing like those lovely, glossy bagels in pictures or even those bought from stores. Haiya!!! Just weird looking bread with a hole in the middle of each. Nevermind... teruskan je.

The next mistake I made was putting them on baking paper instead of baking sheet. Haiya!!! Since I wasn't a baking expert, mana tau baking sheet is not baking paper, but a baking tray lah. Bodoh-nya! I realized my blunder after the first batch - the paper stuck to the bagels at the bottom, thus burning them too. Was still a little smart enough to put the rest onto normal non-stick baking trays after that.

I think I made about 20 bagels in total (lupa nak kira before makan tadi), of which only about 6 came out ok. They still didn't look like them lovely, shiny bagels in pictures, but they were the least ugly looking, and they didn't have paper sticking to their burnt bottom. Pretty chewy, quite tasty too, especially with cream cheese.


Not satisfied!

Gotta make another batch of bagels... but not today lah.

Lessons learnt this round:

1. Put less water, or add more flour to get the right dough texture and (this is the last time) stiffness.
2. Boil the bagels in a gentle simmer instead of bubbling hot water (I did that to 3 bagels and they looked like they had gigantic warts coming out of their skins).
3. Don't put the bagels on baking paper to bake!

If all else fails, buy the bagels. Frozen pack of 4 available at Cold Storage supermarket, Bangsar Shopping Centre.