The Fresh Loaf

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Bagels

ghazi's picture
ghazi

Bagels

Hello Everyone

I have this recipe for bagels made with instant yeast. I like the flavor and would like to convert to sourdough

Can anybody please point me in the right direction as to how much water, yeast etc is needed when converting such a recipe

250g strong white  flour

125g water (I go as much as 140g which makes 56% hydration)

25g oil

5g sugar

5g salt

2g instant yeast

Everytime I make them with sourdough I substitute 40g white starter @ 65% hydration for instant yeast. They have been coming out wet and sometimes difficult to shape. I know bagels are supposed to be in the 55 - 58% range though is it ok to go to 60%? I notice that I don't subtract any flour/water from original recipe to compensate for starter. Can this be my problem? Since starter is low hydration I figure wont make much difference to overall dough

I autolyse the water/flour for about 3 hours + @ 70F

Any advice would be very helpful.

Ghazi

cerevisiae's picture
cerevisiae

Step 1: Read this excellent post from Wild Yeast blog.

ghazi's picture
ghazi

Thank you Cerevisiae, very informative

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

and water in the starter from the original recipe amount so tht the total stays the same or it will be too wet if using a high hydration starter..

ghazi's picture
ghazi

If I used a 50% hydration starter would this be ok to just add on top of the original flour/water quatiity?

Or would I be better off just deducting. Thing is my white starter is AP not high gluten. Am using bread flour for bagels. Sure it would be ok though if I deducted some bread flour for AP?

 

baybakin's picture
baybakin

you would be better off subtracting (it's not difficult really), as if you just added starter on top of the ingrediants already present, it would shift the percentages of oil/salt/sugar to total flour, changing the character of the recipe.

if you're interested, i had a blog post on here for a translated recipe from when i worked in a bagel shop that used a stiff starter. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/37919/oakland-bagel

If you want to change the recipe you already have, I would suggest starting at about 15% of the total flour prefermented in the starter (stiff or wet starter)

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

to make a difference.  I would sub barley malt syrup for the sugar and drop the oil completely to have a more authentic bagel recipe.  BMS is 50% water.  UE 50% of the BMS weight for water in the mix.  I like 53-55% water in bagels.  You won't think these are too wet,

baybakin's picture
baybakin

i agree on the dropping of the oil. Unless...25g is almost exactly the weight of an egg yolk.  Drop the oil and swap it out for a extra-large or jumbo egg yolk (a large egg has about 20g yolk), boom! egg bagels, tasty too.

ghazi's picture
ghazi

Great advice. This is very helpful, interesting on the egg yolk. I guess you seem to drop the oil anyways when you "start" making bread so it goes back to those four simple ingredients

Wonderful to hear from experts

ghazi's picture
ghazi

Last bagel from a batch of 5. Used 50% rye starter. Really like the flavor without the oil, (clean)

Thank you very much

:)