bagels, part II

I tried making bagels again last weekend, and it definitely worked out better. not great, but a step in the right direction.

I spent the greater part of Saturday in pursuit of the very elusive malt powder because I was eager to try a recipe that called for it.

a natural foods co-op, a trader joe's, a giant foods, and 2 whole foods later, I admitted defeat.

Luckily, in addition to stocking a multitude of odd and exotic foods you've never heard of that are not malt powder, Whole Foods has a good selection of cookbooks for sale. I cracked open Baking Illustrated and read what they had to say about bagels. First of all, let me say this book is perfect for me and I covet a copy. They explain everything. There were two pages of exposition on all the different experiments they tried in order to decide on every detail from flour type to water temperature to rising time. I love long, detailed explanations. I'm all about the wordiness. It was love at first sight.

Since I am a cheapo, I did not buy the book, but since I was with my father, a man who has no shame and never gets embarassed, I got some scrap paper from one of the whole foods employees and copied out the recipe. It called for malt syrup, not malt powder, and since whole foods does carry that, I was set.

Here are some interesting things I learned about baking:

1. The difference between bread flour and high gluten flour is that the latter contains 14% gluten, whereas bread flour contains only 12%. If you cannot find high gluten flour in stores (I couldn't), adding in one teaspoon of gluten powder (which most stores do seem to carry) per cup of bread flour approximates the percentages pretty well.

2. You boil bagels for a variety of reasons. It helps make their crust shiny, it stops them from expanding too much in the oven, and it speeds up the action of the yeast on the inside.

3. Despite what most cookbooks say, you really don't need 4 quarts of water to boil your bagels. Baking Illustrated said you only need 3 inches. Which makes sense because if the water is boiling, the bagels should float anyway, so who cares if there are 2 inches or 10 inches of boiling water below them that they're not even touching? Also, most recipes call for anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes of boiling per bagel. 30 seconds works much better.

4. Supposedly, letting things rise in the refrigerator overnight will give your baked goods a better flavor and work just as well as letting things rise in a slightly warm oven for an hour or two. In practice, this doesn't work so well if you forgot whether you used half teaspoon measuring spoon instead of the whole teaspoon one and decide to add an extra teaspoon of salt just in case. It also doesn't work if you're pretty sure you copied down the recipe wrong and you were really supposed to use 1.5 tbsp of yeast instead of 1.5 tsp. However, a little extra salt isn't so bad, and if you're disappointed by how little your baked good has risen overnight, you can still use the warmed oven trick to speed things along the next morning.

mmm bagels