Oh, I love to have a good bagel from time to time. The first one I remember was in August 2010, in Galway. Since then, I had a bagel here and there, but nothing special (apart from one with smoked salmon in The Lordship Hub). Now that I happen to bake bread, it seems like a good time to make a proper bagel or fourteen.
You will also need some malt syrup for boiling the bagels. The recipe suggests 60 g per 1 litre of water. I used a pot of 24 cm diameter which easily fitted three bagels for cooking in two litres of water, so 120 g of syrup was required.
It’s also optional to use seeds for sprinkle. The first time I made three types: with poppy, lin and sesame. By the end I mixed them together and added a bit of black onion seeds. The last ones turned out the best. This time I only used poppy and nothing.
It took me a while to try it because I had no idea what a high gluten flour was. While looking for answers, I found a nice article on Leaf on how to get a high gluten flour out of strong flour with use of vital wheat gluten. To make it not so easy, they used volume measures that I do not consider proper for baking, as for instance a cup of flour on top of bag can weigh less than a cup of flour on the bottom where it is more packed. That is why I usually assume approximate measures for starters, store them in grams and then improve if the results are not satisfactory. I needed 900 grams of high gluten flour – in this case I checked what is considered to be gram measurement of a cup of strong flour and took 150 g for conversion, then added two teaspoons of vital wheat gluten per each 150 g of flour (12 teaspoons altogether) and then weighed the difference – 55 g. This gives 6 g of vital wheat gluten per 100 g of flour. This ration gives satisfactory results – the first time I made them, I think I added less and the bagels were wrinkly as Grandpa Pig.
As you easily notice, I ended up with 955 g of flour. I’m a bit of hypocrite when it comes to ingredients measuring – I always say it is important to be super precise and not always follow what I say. I added about 20 g water more as a result – I’ve noticed flours in UK need less water than the recipes suggest, unless they are made using Canadian grains. This way I only violated the flour to salt ratio.
I don’t have diastatic malt powder, so I used a teaspoon of barley malt syrup.
Most bagels we made disappeared within one hour from being baked, rest did not survive the supper. Some of them had larger holes because I did not degas them properly when shaping.
Excuse my lacking visual skills. English Breakfast bagel:
