Bagel Quest

[huja]

I've been complaining about the lack of a decent bagel for nearly two years and actually did something about it today . . .

Boiled, topped and ready to go into the oven


Success out of the oven


Failure out of the oven


I did this up proper . . . malt in the bagels, quick dip in boiling water, etc. Hope they taste good because they were kind of a pain to make.

Recipe here.

Purchased ingredients here.

[BaconBreadBaker]

its been a minimum of 26mins since your post. WTF man????? how do they taste? was it worth the effort or did it taste like a 7-11 "bagel"?

[huja]

its been a minimum of 26mins since your post. WTF man????? how do they taste? was it worth the effort or did it taste like a 7-11 "bagel"?

LOL. Apologies. Bagels are not bad. Crust is right - chewy without being rubbery. Crumb (inside) is not quite right - a bit too dense. Maybe need to give the yeast a little more time to do its thing before the boil. Still, much better than anything I've gotten here. Hopefully ver. 2.0 will be better.

[rani]

Am going to give this a try! Thx for sharing

[BaconBreadBaker]

I expect samples of v2... Stat!

[Tung Chung mum]

where did you get the malt syrup and the unbleached flour?

(I thought all the flour in Taste etc was bleached)

[BaconBreadBaker]

where did you get the malt syrup and the unbleached flour?

(I thought all the flour in Taste etc was bleached)

I "think" I have seen all these supplies in I HEART CAKE (Yau ma Tei). Excellent shop regardless.

[huja]

VER 2.0 "The Upgrade"

Made a few adjustments:
1. New yeast.
2. Actually weighed the dough and divided into 9 equal parts (rather than the 8 per the recipe). This is because I can only cook 3 of these buggers at a time and rather than baking 2 trays of three bagels plus a tray with just two bagels (with a different baking time), all 3 trays with 3 bagels should (in theory) bake for the same amount of time.
3. Took more care in sealing the ends to form the loop. QC much higher this round to avoid the "crab-claw" looking mistakes.
4. Adjusted baking times down because I'm only baking 3 bagels at a time (rather than 4) and each bagel is a big smaller.
5. Observation - the last three bagels have had 3X the time to rise and are bigger than the first batch of three. No way around this as in a home kitchen I can only boil and bake 3 at a time. So the they is going to be great variance in the crumb in the three batches.

Formed


Proofed. See how they got puffy after 18 minutes?


Boiled. This is what makes a bagel a bagel - chewy crust.


Topped


Finished


Bagels are currently cooling while I'm writing this . . . soon to report back on the results.

[huja]

Once again the crust is right
Once again the crumb is a little off
Too soft and bread-like. Need to get it a bit denser without it becoming a brick. That means one of three things (or some combo of the three):
1. Less yeast
2. Less time to proof
3. More salt to stunt the activity of the yeast.

I'll figure it out. Meanwhile, I'll just eat the mistakes.