Bagels: My Spring Break Challenge

As you can probably tell from my previous posts, I adore baking bread.  It's a very rewarding process.  Now, sadly, after winter break, I had to leave my bread sponge behind at home, and no one was willing to feed him every day and use him for me in my absence, so alas, the bread sponge is no more.  When I went home for spring break, I didn't want to make another sponge on to see it have the same fate a week later as Mr. Bread Sponge number one.  I contemplated making straight yeast breads without a sponge, but these don't have nearly as much flavor and texture as sponge breads.  Hmm...what challenging, interesting, bready thing would I make instead... BAGELS!  I had already attempted making bagels several years earlier, and they were a flop.  Or more like sad, hard, circles.  It would be a challenge, but I would attempt them again.  I did some research online and found a recipe that looked to be pretty tried-and-true; many bloggers swore by Peter Reinhart's bagel recipe.  Now, this recipe does call for a sponge, but it is a pretty quick sponge and the whole sponge gets used in the recipe, so it met my criteria of not wanting to deal with a high-maintenance sponge.

Challenge accepted.

Homemade Bagels
(adapted from Marzipan, who slightly adapted Peter Reinhart's recipe)
...makes 12 big bagels...

Ingredients:


For the sponge

• 
1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 4 cups (18 ounces) bread flour
• 
2 1/2 cups (20 ounces) water, room temperature 

For the dough

• 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
• 
3 3/4 cups (17 ounces) bread flour
• 
2 3/4 teaspoons salt

• 1 tablespoon barley malt syrup (or honey or brown sugar apparently works, too)

For the boiling/finishing

• 
1 tablespoon baking soda for each pot of boiling water you plan to use
• cornmeal
• 1 egg white mixed with a tablespoon of water
• Sesame seeds, poppy seeds

Directions:

Day one

1. Sponge: Put the 18oz of flour and the yeast into the largest bowl you have for your stand mixer.  With the whisk attachment, stir the yeast into the flour.  Add the water, stirring only until it forms a smooth, sticky batter. Remove the whisk attachment and cover the bowl with plastic wrap.  Leave at room temperature for approximately 2-2 1/2 hours, or until the mixture becomes bubbly.  It should swell to nearly double in size and collapse when the bowl is tapped on the countertop.
2. Dough: After the sponge has sat for a long enough time, in the same mixing bowl add the additional yeast to the sponge.  Using your dough hook attachment, stir the yeast into the sponge. Then add only 14oz (about 3 cups) of the flour and all of the salt and malt syrup.  Mix on low speed with the dough hook until the ingredients form a ball, slowly working in the remaining 3oz of flour (about 3/4 cup) to stiffen the dough.  It may take a while to mix in all the flour.  If your mixer can't handle the volume, just do it by hand!
3. If your mixer can handle it, knead the dough with the hook for 6 minutes.  If your mixer cannot do the job, you can dump the dough onto the counter and knead it by hand for about 10 minutes.  (You will know when your mixer has had enough...it starts to make the most gut-wrenching, horrible mixer sounds....eeeee ugh eeeee ugh eeee.  This happened to me after about 4 minutes of kneading in the machine, so I relieved my machine of the pain and just did another 6-8 minutes of kneading by hand.) The dough should be firm, but still pliable and silky smooth.  There should be no raw flour – all ingredients should be hydrated.  (Marzipan wrote this: "The dough should pass the windowpane test and register 77 to 81 degrees F".  I have no idea what the windowpane test is.  If you do, go ahead and use it.  My guess would be it involves flinging dough at the window...kinda like the pasta sticking test, but I spared my kitchen windows the disaster and just used my intuition instead).  If the dough seems too dry and rips, add a few drops of water and continue kneading.  If the dough seems tacky or sticky, add more flour to achieve the stiffness required.  The kneaded dough should feel nice and smooth.  You should be able to pet it.
4. Immediately divide the dough into 4 1/2 ounce pieces for standard bagels (you'll have 12), or smaller if desired. Form the pieces into rolls.
5. Cover the rolls with a damp towel and allow them to rest for approximately 20 minutes.
6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment and mist lightly with spray oil. 
7. Poke a hole in a ball of bagel dough and gently stretch the hole to widen it to approximately 2 1/2 inches in diameter (always good to keep a clean ruler in your kitchen!  The dough should be as evenly stretched as possible (try to avoid thick and thin spots.)
8. Place each of the shaped pieces 2 inches apart on the pans.  Mist the bagels very lightly with the spray oil and cover each baking sheet loosely with plastic wrap.  Let the baking sheets sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes.
9. Check to see if the bagels are ready to be retarded in the refrigerator by using the “float test”.  Fill a small bowl with cool or room-temperature water.  The bagels are ready to be retarded when they float within 10 seconds of being dropped into the water.  Take one bagel and test it. If it floats, immediately return the tester bagel to the pan, pat it dry, cover the pan, and place it in the refrigerator overnight (make sure you put it in a cold spot of the fridge*).  If the bagel does not float. Return it to the pan and continue to proof the dough at room temperature, checking back every 10 to 20 minutes or so until a tester floats.  The time needed to accomplish the float will vary, depending on the ambient temperature and the stiffness of the dough.

Day two

1. The following day, preheat the oven to 500 degrees F (475 degrees F for convection oven) with the two racks set in the middle of the oven. Bring a large, wide pot of water to a boil.  To be more efficient, use two big pots.  Add 1 tbsp baking soda to each pot of boiling water.
2. Remove the bagels from the refrigerator and gently drop them into the water, boiling only as many as comfortably fit (they should float within 10 seconds).  Boil the bagels for 45 seconds per side. Remove the bagels using a slotted spoon or spider to get rid of excess water.  The longer the bagels boil, the chewier they will be, apparently.  While the bagels are boiling, sprinkle the same parchment-lined sheet pans with cornmeal. 
3. When the bagels are done being boiled, return them to the now cornmeal-dusted, parchment-lined baking sheets.  Brush the bagels with egg wash and allow it to dry.  Then brush them again with egg wash and top with sesame seeds or poppy seeds while still wet.
4. When all the bagels have been boiled and dressed with seeds, place the pans on the 2 middle shelves in the oven.  Bake for approximately 5 minutes, then rotate the pans, switching shelves and giving the pans a 180-degree rotation.  (If you are baking only 1 pan, keep it on the center shelf but still rotate 180 degrees.)  After the rotation, lower the oven setting to 450 degrees F (425 for convection) and continue baking for about 5 minutes, or until the bagels turn light golden brown. 
5. Remove the pans from the oven and let the bagels cool on a rack for 15 minutes or longer before serving.
6. Serve with your favorite bagel toppings.  May I suggest cream cheese and nova lox?  Or how about some walnut butter?  Jam?  Butter?  Or make a delicious bagel sandwich! 
7. These bagels freeze beautifully.  Slice them and place them in a freezer bag; remove a half or two, and toast it up whenever you have a bagel craving!

*Retarding the bagels in the fridge overnight is an essential step in the process.  I made the mistake of putting one of my baking sheets at the very very top of the fridge (because this is the only place I could make it fit without major refrigerator rearrangements).  Evidently, the fridge was not very cold up there because my bagels continued to rise - they over-rose - and then subsequently collapsed.  While they still tasted excellent, they were really not the most beautiful creations...kind of flat and lumpy rather than smooth and puffy like their properly-chilled counterparts.  

This was a labor of love, but it made for the most delicious brunch!  And don't you feel so much better when you are eating homemade things baked with lots of love rather than mass produced products?

My first time using instant yeast!  Isn't the guy on the package super adorable?  Although he's being rather bold with just how much yeast he's casually dumping into his bowl...I can only imagine what he's cooking up! 

Yeast and flour.

Add the water.

Mix mix mix.

Oooh so smooth and silky.

Pre-resting.

Post-resting.  Nice and bubbly and doubled in size.

The next round of ingredients.

Yeast = fairy dust.  Just like magic.

Barley malt syrup...now this is really really sticky stuff.  (The process of getting all the syrup out of the tbsp measure was quite long...I should have greased the spoon a little bit first to make the syrup slide right out.)

Go mixer go!

Action shot...you can do it...

The "eeee ugh eeeee ugh" got too painful after a while.  Mr. Kitchen Aid's work was done.

Plop.  Let the kneading begin.

Smooooooosh.

So smooth and pet-able.  Ready to go.

I love my little scale. 

All the little soldiers lined up, ready to get their holes.

Poke.  Tee hee hee.  Best part.

Stretch!  Really, you want the whole to be about 2 1/2 inches wide...it may seem like a huge hole, but trust me, it's going to shrink as the dough rises and bakes!

Into the fridge they go.

After being retarded in the fridge overnight.  This was the good tray that was in the cold part of the fridge.  I will spare you from the ugly bagels. 

My mad scientist/witch's brewing station.

All boiled, egged, and seeded.  (I also made some poppy seed bagels, but these were the ugly half of the bagels...poppy seeds are better cover-up than sesame seeds but still not enough to be blog-worthy.)

Out of the oven - golden brown and delicious.  And they actually look like legitimate bagels!

Glamour shot in the sun!

Soft and chewy with a lovely crust!  A delicious bagel with structural integrity and a really yummy flavor.
A well worth it labor of love.

A mother-daughter brunch on the deck in full sun with bagels, lox, and cream cheese...what could be more perfect?

Next time I make bagels, I think I'll attempt some crazy toppings and perhaps different flour combinations...so many things to try!

Now, normally I tend to not eat too many bagels because they really don't hold a lot of nutritional value.  And I think someone partially scarred me once by referring to bagels as "glue in your colon".  This is perhaps true of those sad, commercially packaged bagels.  However, this is a case where my personal mantra comes in: "You can eat anything as long as you can make it yourself."

Vegetable Phyllo Tart

I am inspired by all vegetables.  Their colors and funky shapes just make me happy.  A few weeks ago, I saw Ina on the Food Network make a spinach pie with phyllo dough.  Now, I have no doubt that it was delicious (although I'm sure that if you followed her recipe exactly, your blood pressure would be through the roof following your meal, and you'd be reaching for glass upon glass of water to quell the saltiness in your mouth), but just spinach?  That's just boring (and don't get me wrong, I loove spinach, but to make just a green pie, come on, let's get a little more inventive).  Therefore, I took her phyllo pie idea and jazzed it up a bit.  I went to the grocery store without a clear plan (this always makes shopping more fun!) and just let myself be lured in by the sexiest veggies.  Immediately, Madame Swiss Chard with her bright red stalks caught my eye.  Then, I saw Mr. Sweet Potato, lying on his orange side, his potato eye winking at me seductively.  And then, from a distance, I felt myself pulled towards the the little button mushrooms, their tops smooth and round like pearls.  I had my ingredients.  And this was going to be one well-dressed pie.

I apologize that the following recipe is very much a series of approximations.  While this pie turned out deliciously, any combination of vegetables would have been divine, and I invite you to go to your grocery store and be inspired by whatever catches your eye!

Ingredients:

• two bunches of red swiss chard, stems and leaves chopped but kept separate
• 1 red onion, chopped
• paprika, turmeric, and cayenne, to taste
• 1 large sweet potato, cut into small cubes
• 1 pound small white mushrooms, cut in fourths
• shredded Pecorino Romano cheese (I'm sure a sharp parmesan would work too!)
• salt and pepper
• 8 sheets of spelt phyllo pastry dough (the spelt flour dough has a much more interesting taste than the regular dough!)
• several tbsp melted butter or olive oil or a mix (I did a mix)

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a medium bowl, toss the sweet potato cubes with some olive oil, salt, and pepper to coat them well.  Then, spread the cubes out on a baking sheet.  Bake for 20 or so minutes (depending on how big your cubes are) until they are softened and a little brown/caramelized.  Don't let them get too mushy.
3. When the sweet potatoes are cooked, set them aside.
4. In a large pot on medium heat, cook your onion with olive oil for a few minutes until soft.  Stir frequently lest the onion burn!
5. Add in the swiss chard stems.  Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes until they are almost tender.
6. Add in the swiss chard leaves, paprika, turmeric, and cayenne to taste.  Cook, stirring frequently, until wilted and soft, about another 5 more minutes.  Adjust seasonings if necessary.
7. When the swiss chard is cooked, turn off the stove and set aside.
8. In a wide pan, add some butter, olive oil, or a combination.  Add in half the mushrooms.  Cook for 5 or so minutes, turning occasionally, until they are nice and browned.  Remove the mushrooms from the pan and set aside.  Add in a little more butter/oil and the other half of the mushrooms.  Cook this half like you did the first.
9. When the mushrooms are cooked, turn off the stove and set aside the mushrooms with the first batch.
10. Lightly butter a 9 inch round cake pan. 
11. On a clean, flat surface, lay out your first sheet of phyllo.  Brush liberally with melted butter/oil.  Lay the next sheet on top of the first.  Then, brush the top with melted butter/oil.  Repeat until you have stacked all 8 sheets.
12. Carefully lay the phyllo stack in the buttered cake pan and adjust it gently so that it is touching all the sides.  There will be a good amount of phyllo dough hanging over the edges.
13. In the phyllo, lay down half of the swiss chard.  Sprinkle the top with Romano to your liking.
14. Add on the top half of the sweet potato and half of the mushrooms.
15. Lay on top the rest of the swiss chard.  Sprinkle again with Romano.
16. Add on the top the rest of the sweet potato and mushrooms.
17. Carefully take the sides of the phyllo hanging over the edges of the pan and fold them over the contents of the pie...like wrapping a present!
18. Brush the top of the phyllo with melted butter.
19. Cook in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes until golden brown.
20. Enjoy your veggies in style!

A big present of veggies, all wrapped up and waiting to be opened!

All I can say is: swoon.  Look at those colors, those textures, yumm.  And isn't phyllo fun?  Look at how flaky it is!

Piece number one.  Went back for pieces number two and three soon after.

This pie disappears too quickly...but I did save some for lunch the next day...just popped it back in the oven for a few minutes to crisp up the phyllo, and it was good to go!

Beautiful Buttery Biscuits

I don't think I had ever had a biscuit before...or if I had, I had only taken a bite and then passed it off to someone else because it was unappetizingly bland, greasy, or dry.  Biscuits had a very negative connotation in my mind.  I associated them with heavy, southern, soul food, which is exactly the opposite of my food tastes.  However, I saw this recipe for biscuits a few months back and got inspired.  Of course, it took me several months before I actually got around to making them, but they were well worth the wait!  These biscuits were oh so light and fluffy.  They puffed up beautifully in the oven...much more than I expected...imagine my surprise when I walked into the kitchen five minutes after having put them in the oven to see my once 1/2 inch tall dough lumps now standing a good 2-2 1/2 inches!  I was amazed.  I wish I had a time-lapse camera to see those babies rise up.  Alas, being out of practice in photodocumenting, I forgot to take a pre-oven picture, so I have no comparison to the final product to show.  But believe you me, it was an astonishing transformation...a metamorphosis if you will...one that paralleled my own transformation from a biscuit hater to a biscuit lover.

Biscuits
(adapted from Half Baked)

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup AP flour
• 1/3 cups cake flour (I substituted with 1/4 cup AP flour and 2 tsp cornstarch)
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 tbsp (3/4 stick) of very cold butter, cut into 12 pieces
• 3/4 cup whole milk

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
3. Drop in the cold pieces of butter.  Cut the butter into the dry ingredients using a pastry cutter or rub the butter in with your fingers until you have a pebble-like mixture.  Work quickly!  You want the butter to stay very cold.
4. Once you have pea-sized pieces (and some bigger and smaller pieces as well) of butter in the flour, add in the milk.  Mix with a fork just until the dough comes together.  Do not over-mix!
5. Using your hands, grab the dough and knead it 3-4 times just to bring it into a nice lump of dough.
6. On a lightly floured surface, dump out the dough and roll it to be 1/2 inch thick.  You may need to flour the dough lightly to keep it from sticking.
7. Cut the biscuits using a biscuit cutter or round cookie cutter.  I had neither of these, so I used a glass cup, which is apparently a big no-no, but it worked!  Cut the biscuits as close together as possible so that you can get the most biscuits out of the first round of cutting.
8. Pile up the scraps and roll them out again to 1/2 inch thick.  Cut more biscuits.  If you must repeat, repeat.  Beware: the more times you handle the dough, the tougher and less fluffy it will become.
9. Place the biscuits on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Bake in the oven for 12-14 minutes until puffed and golden!
10. Serve warm with marmalade...or more butter!  These taste particularly good when eaten on the deck, sitting in warm sunshine.

*These biscuits can be reheated in the oven the next day or frozen and then reheated with lovely results!

Standing tall!  My little biscuit babies all grew up...so fast, too!

Eat me!  Eat me!

Fluffy fluffies on the inside.

Orange marmalade was absolutely the perfect complement to these biscuits!

I swear that biscuit is smiling at me...see it?

Hmm...how can you only eat one?  Om nom nom.

Oh it has been too long!

Dear Mr. Blog,

I must apologize profusely for having neglected you for over a month.  Alas, the evil giants of Genetics and Physics took over my life and left me without spare time to attend to you!  Even during my Spring Break I failed to post on you.  But fear not!  I did a loooot of baking during that week and photodocumented a fair amount (although I must say I was out of practice).  Therefore, there are posts to come...this weekend if I can get my act together!

Love,
Fred