Sourdough Bagel Attempt 1
I decided to try and make sourdough bagels this week. I always thought bagels would be really hard to make and unnecessary since good bagels are easy to locate in NY. However, I decided to try making them at home after the last bagel I purchased had no flavor whatsoever.
I mostly followed this recipe from Baked the Blog, but I followed more of the process of Hamelman's bagel recipe (except he uses pate fermentee).
I didn't have diastatic malt or malt syrup, so I just used honey.
Overall, happy with how these came out and pleasantly surprised that it really was quite easy. Next time I'd try to get my hands on some diastatic malt, malt syrup, and maybe make the bagels a bit bigger (these were 120g). I'd also try a longer cold ferment (this one was about 12 hours).
Comments
Your bagels look amazing Ilene especially for a first attempt. I too have read that bagels are a challenge and I can only handle one challenge at a time so working on baguettes for now. However, you bagels look great and are a very tempting next challenge.
Benny
Thanks, Benny. I have been following the baguette challenge a bit and have been very impressed by your efforts. I think baguettes (and maybe especially the shaping) are more difficult than bagels. I would like these to be a bit taller and fluffier next time - not quite sure what went wrong. On a different note, I've noticed that you make beautiful pizzas and that you use the Community Bake recipe so I'm trying to pull that together now! Just curious, have you ever grilled one of the pizzas? I'm going to see my sister for the first time in 8 months for a socially-distanced dinner and was planning to grill pizza outside.
Thank you Ilene, I’ve had some ups and downs with the baguette CB but strangely my crumb on my baguettes recently seem more consistent than my crumb on my batards, go figure.
The CB pizza recipe is the only pizza dough that I’ve used because we’ve enjoyed it and it is so easy to make. I have never grilled a pizza because I don’t have access to a grill, but I have a friend who grills his pizzas all the time and they do come out great. I’ll be interested to hear how your grilled pizzas turn out and any tips you can offer people who want to try it.
Your bagels certainly looked great to me, but like me you’re picky about your bakes too and always wanting to improve.
Stay well
Benny