Bagels

Today, I made bagels according to a recipe I've used a few times:

Homemade bagel recipe by John D. Lee

4 cups bread flour

1 Tbls sugar

1 1/2 tsps salt

1 Tbls vegetable oil

2 tsps instant yeast

1-1/4- 1-1/2 cups of warm water.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, adding the yeast to the water first. Knead for about ten minutes, or until the dough is uniform and smooth.

Cut the dough into 8 equal sized balls, and let rest for a few minutes.

Now, take each of the dough balls and using two hands, roll it into a little snake on the counter. When the snake is longer than the width of your two hands, wrap it around your dominant roiling hand. The dough rope should be wrapped so the overlapping ends are together at your palm, near the start of your fingers. Now take the two overlapping ends, and use your palm to squish/roll these two ends together. Once the dough is fused, you should have a perfectly circular bagel-to-be! This is the only part of the process that can take a little practice before your bagels will look really professional. Don't get discouraged if they don't look perfect, it just takes practice!

Let your bagels rest on the counter for about 20 minutes, and meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil and preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Also, grease a baking pan with a little bit of oil. 

After the 20 minute wait, your bagels will start to look puffy, and it's time to get them boiling! Add them as many at a time as you can to your boiling water without crowding them. Boil for about a minute, turn them over, and boil for another minute. Take them out a let dry for a minute and then place them on your oiled baking tray. Repeat until all the bagels are boiled. 

Add the tray to the oven, and after 10 minutes, flip the bagels over, bake for another ten minutes; and they're done!

Let them cool before eating, toppings should be added half-way through the baking, at the time of the flip.

My favorite type of bagel is jalepeno cheddar, and normally I add both the peppers and the cheese while I'm flipping them, but today I mixed the chopped peppers into the dough and added the cheese as usual. They're pretty good bagels, give them a try!

-John