The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Bagels, continued...

BeckyBaker730's picture
BeckyBaker730

Bagels, continued...

Finished with my bagels for the night. They are now resting comfortably for 20 minutes or so on a sheet pan in a plastic trash bag. When my kitchen timer beeps, I will put them in the fridge for the night.
A few interesting points:
1. I am aiming for a somewhat normal cinnamon-raisin bagel. I combined the recipe from this site with the cinnamon-raisin bagel recipe from fooddownunder.com, in hopes of achieving a balance between the two.
2. I could not for the life of me get that last 3/4 cup of flour into the dough. I think this might have to do with the addition of the 1 cup of raisins. Instead of 7 and 3/4 cups of flour, I ended up with an even 7, plus 1 cup of raisins and 1 TBS of cinnamon. They look and smell exactly like the cinnamon-raisin bagels I am used to, so here's to hoping they turn out good.
3. Kneading this dough is serious work! I like to knead by hand but this dough just about had me beat. Next time I may surrender and let my KitchenAid stand mixer handle it. It was fun though, especially because all the kneading started to break down the raisins a little, which made the dough smell amazing.
4. I have never made a sponge before tonight. I have to say that is quite possibly the weirdest thing I have ever produced in my kitchen! I'm one of those people who (as a kid) hid wet bread in tinfoil all over the house to make mold for science projects in gradeschool, so I am easily fascinated by weird science stuff. I had to take a minute or two to just poke at the sponge and marvel at the weird foamy texture. :-)

Well, my timer just beeped, so into the fridge they go.

Comments

Kitchen Witch's picture
Kitchen Witch

Do you have a recipe for the bagels they sound great and my son loves bagels expecialy cinnamon raisin, but I haven't been able to find a decent recipe out there yet.

Floydm's picture
Floydm

The bagel recipe on this site, from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, is excellent. And very simple.

To turn a batch into cinnamon raisin bagels, just mix in a tablespoon or so of cinnamon, a little sugar, and a handful of raisins. You are all set.

Kitchen Witch's picture
Kitchen Witch

Thanks we'll try that next time