The Beginning
My First Experience With Bagels
My Second Experience and Whole Wheat Recipe
More on Shaping and Toppings
Mixing Bagels by Hand
Sourdough Bagels

Forget about the recipe in The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book (which I have never tried, because, from reading it, I could tell it was not what I was after.) If you want to make real bagels, not like the ones sold in supermarkets, read on.

The October issue of "Cook's Illustrated" has the article "Better Than Store-Bought Bagels." In it Todd Butcher details his experiments and consultations with food chemists that resulted in his final recipe. It is fun reading if you can find this wonderful, but expensive, magazine.

Without all the background, here's the recipe, followed by my experiences with it and my minor adaptations to whole wheat and sourdough:

Don't try to double this recipe, if you value your mixer.

4 cups high-gluten flour (such as Sir Lancelot from King Arthur Flour)
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp barley malt syrup or powder
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (80 degrees)
3 Tbsp cornmeal, for dusting baking sheet

Mix flour, salt and malt in bowl of standing mixer fitted with dough hook. Add yeast and water; mix at lowest speed until dough looks scrappy, like shreds just beginning to come together, about 4 minutes. Increase to speed 2; continue mixing until dough is cohesive, smooth, and stiff, 8 to 10 minutes.

Turn dough on to work surface; divide into eight portions, about 4 ounces each. Roll pieces into smooth balls and cover with towel to rest for 5 minutes.

Form each dough ball into a rope 11 inches long by rolling it under your outstretched palms. Do not taper ends. Overlap the ends about 1 1/2 inches and pinch the entire overlapped area firmly together. If they don't want to stick, you can dampen them slightly. Place the loop of dough around the base of your fingers and, with the overlap under your palm, roll the rope several times, applying firm pressure to seal the seam. The bagel should be roughly the same thickness all the way around. Place on cornmeal dusted baking sheet, cover tightly with plastic wrap; refrigerate 12 to 18 hours.

About 20 minutes before baking, remove dough rings from refrigerator. Adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 450 degrees. Fill large soup kettle with 3-inch depth of water; bring water to rapid boil. To test the proofing of the dough rings, fill large bowl with cool water. Drop dough ring into bowl; it should float immediately to surface (if not, retest every 5 minutes.)

Working four at a time, drop dough rings into boiling water, stirring and submerging loops with Chinese skimmer or slotted spoon, until very slightly puffed, 30 to 35 seconds. Remove rings from water; transfer to wire rack, bottom side down to drain.

Transfer boiled rings, rough side down, to parchment paper lined baking sheet or baking stone. Bake until deep golden brown and crisp, about 14 minutes. Use tongs to transfer to wire rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Topped bagels:
Topping ingredients stick to the bagels best when applied to the dough rings just as they come out of the boiling water, while they are still wet and sticky from boiling.

1/2 cup single topping of choice, such as raw sesame seeds, poppy or caraway seeds, dehydrated onion or garlic flakes, or kosher salt

or

1/2 cup combination of topping ingredients, including 2 Tbsp each of sesame and poppy seeds and 1 Tbsp each of caraway seeds, kosher salt, onion and garlic flakes.

My first experience:

I didn't have high gluten flour, so I used King Arthur Special For Machines Bread Four and added 2 Tbsp vital wheat gluten. I weighed out one lb of flour, rather than measuring by cups. (the sack said 4 cups = 1 lb)

I used malt syrup (Dry malt turns to rock in storage, if the least bit of moisture gets into it. Liquid malt lasts forever, tightly sealed in a glass jar, in the refrigerator. Malt is expensive, so these considerations are important.) Malt extract is the stickiest substance in the world. I couldn't see mixing it in with the flour, so I drizzled it in while the water was mixing in.

I compared the dough ropes to a sheet of letter size paper to measure 11 inches.

I couldn't have fit a baking sheet into my refrigerator without rearranging all the shelves and all the stuff there. So, I put the bagels in zip lock bags, four in each. I didn't use cornmeal because the dough rings were not the least bit sticky (who ever heard of cornmeal on a bagel, anyway?)

When I removed the bags from the fridge after 12 hours, the bagels hadn't risen much at all. I decided to let them rise at cool room temperature (it was the middle of the night) before removing them from the bags. Big mistake! I'm sure they would have come out easily while still cold, but they were firmly stuck in places after sitting out for an hour. Extricating the dough from the bags partly deflated the dough and created odd shapes.

I overboiled most of the bagels because of the time spent dipping each in the sesame seeds and crying ouch! as I tried to remove the hot bagel with my hand, from the seeds to the parchment paper lined baking sheet. (I had forgotten about first putting them on a rack. It was 3 am.) Maybe if I had drained them on a rack first, they would not have stuck so firmly to the paper.

My bagels were flat on the bottom. I didn't expect this. The the commentary that accompanied the recipe said this fault had been worked out. I wished I had baked them on my quarry tiles to get a better oven spring, but by the time I thought of this, the oven was already at 450 degrees and I didn't want to risk breaking the tiles by too rapid heating. (And it was the middle of the night.)

The first one I ate while still hot was not as chewy as I had expected and I didn't like the taste of malt that was apparent (even though, as an ale maker, I like malt.) The next one I ate, on the way to school, was chewy and didn't taste as strongly of malt. By the time I got home from school, the bagels that had been left out on the rack were harder than I think my usual Brooklyn Baking Co. bagels would have been under the same circumstances.

All in all, I thought they were pretty good, but not better than Brooklyn Bagel Co's. Then, I noted that the article had said "better than store bought" not "better than from a good bagel bakery."

My Second Experience, and Whole Wheat Recipe:

This time I tried 50% whole wheat.
I used 1/2 lb King Arthur White Whole Wheat flour
and 1/2 lb K.A. Special For Machines
I still added 2 Tbsp gluten powder
I increased the water slightly to 1 1/3 cups (because of the w.w. flour)
I dissolved the Red Star instant yeast (finally decided to try it) in 100 degree water (as the yeast pkg said to do.) After 5 minutes, I dissolved the malt extract in the yeast water (I figured it might not have been evenly distributed in the dough last time, and the sugar wouldn't hurt the yeast); waited five more minutes; then mixed it in the flours & salt.

I made the ropes about an inch shorter (to make smaller holes and plumper bagels, the way I like them.)

I lined 2 straight sided 9 inch cake pans (that won't nest) with plastic wrap (for quick removal of the dough rings) and sprinkled about 1 tsp of semolina in each pan (this is what I prefer to use for pizza etc. instead of cornmeal.) Put four dough rings in each pan; covered the pan with plastic wrap so it wouldn't touch the dough and stacked the pans in the fridge.

This time my schedule permitted a longer rise (15 hours.) I got up at 4:25 am; removed the dough from the fridge (again, it didn't look very risen); fired up the oven (with tiles) and set the water to boil. The dough floated right away, so it didn't need more rising. I boiled them one at a time and drained on a rack after topping some and leaving others plain.

I added a small amount of kosher salt to the sesame seeds for some of the bagels (I don't like as much salt as you find in bakeries or in the original recipe.) I tried dried onion flakes on two.

The time spent sitting on the rack before baking was important. The last two (which hadn't sat for as long) did stick to the tiles. None of the others stuck at all.

After "draining" on the racks, I put them on a peel dusted with a small amount of semolina and put them in the oven at 5:05am. They baked perfectly, except the onion flakes burned.

These bagels were perfect! Perfect hot and cold. Before going to work, I remembered to put the bagels in a paper bag; they were perfect when I got home. I split and toasted one; spread it with cream cheese and forgot about the kids at school.

Clearly dehydrated onions are not the proper topping. Thank goodness I didn't have any garlic flakes to try. Can you imagine the smell of burnt garlic at 5:30 in the morning?

I now shape my bagels more easily. Instead of making ropes, I just poke holes with a thumb or finger in the center of the dough balls and shape into rings. The bagels are somewhat rougher in appearance but when toped with seeds or onions, they look just fine. If I were to bake the bagels plain, I would make the ropes.

I remove the bagels from the bowl of seeds with a chopstick. No more burned or sticky fingers.

Try other seeds for toppings: a mixture of sesame, poppy and sunflower seeds is very good. Add some caraway or cumin seeds for an interesting difference.

Here's how I now make onion topping:
Thinly slice an onion and cut into pieces. You'll know the shape you want, not square but not too long. Saute in very little oil just until transparent and limp, not browned. Sprinkle with a little poppy seed and kosher salt Let the onion sit out in a shallow bowl overnight to dry out a little while the bagels are in the fridge. The onion doesn't stick as readily to the bagels as do seeds. I press the onion topping on the bagels as they sit on the racks. As they bake, the onion should get a bit charred here and there.

I finally tried mixing the stiff bagel dough by hand and found it is even easier than with the heavy duty mixer. This is how I did it. In a large bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water (100 degrees) and stir to dissolve; add the malt syrup; stir; sprinkle a couple pinches of flour on top and set aside to activate. Mix the flour, gluten and salt together. Add the flour mixture a very little at a time (up to 1/3 cup) stirring smooth after each addition. When this batter starts to look like dough and it is harder to stir by hand, pour the remaining flour on your kneading surface and top it with the dough. Knead in all the remaining flour, but don't add any more flour than you originally measured or weighed out. Knead well until smooth and plastic. Proceed with the recipe above.

2 cups frothy, bubbling starter (the consistency is a thick batter, not runny)
1 Tbsp (or 2 if you like a maltier taste) malt syrup
12 oz (3 cups) KA Special For Machines flour (if you have stronger flour, skip the gluten)
2 Tbsp gluten
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt (you could use 2 tsp)
1/3 to 1/2 cup lukewarm water

Put the starter in the bowl of a heavy duty mixer with dough hook. Drizzle in the sticky, gooey malt syrup. Mix thoroughly at slow speed. Mix together the flour, gluten and salt. Add to the starter mixture and mix at slow speed until it is a shaggy mess. Add 1/4 cup water while mixing; keep adding more a little bit at a time until the flour is almost all incorporated. Raise speed a notch and add a little more water as necessary to make a stiff, plastic dough. The dough will weigh 2 pounds when ready.

The dough will tend to dry out more quickly, so be careful to keep it covered when not actually working with it. Proceed as with the original recipe. Refrigerate for only 12-15 hours, then let the bagels rise for an additional few hours at cool room temperature before boiling and baking.

I hope that including all the gory details of my bagel making experiences has given you a taste of what it is like to experiment with baking rather than just following recipes. Feel free to try things your own way. I'd be glad to hear of any improvements you discover.