February 21, 2010 - 9:17am
High hydration bagels
When I mixed my bagel dough this morning; it was immediately obvious I had made a mistake, either in scaling the ingredients or in deciphering my cryptic notes. Confusion is highly possible since I use the same Biga to make a couple different doughs. Anyway the dough was very wet so I worked in more flour but it was still probably 67-68% hydration when I said good enough. They came out quite well I thought. I'm sure they won't be as chewy as normal but should eat well enough.
I need to either start wearing my glasses and/or become more fully awake when I mix dough. : )
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most factory bagels are hydrated to around 60-65% simply because the stiffer, leaner doughs called for in traditional recipes jam and/or burn out all that expensive equipment. so your 68% bagels really aren't much different from those produced by Dunkin' Donuts, Einstein Bros/Noah's, Bruegger's and Lender's.
Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com
"so your 68% bagels really aren't much different from those produced by Dunkin' Donuts,"
Methinks you've been insulted! ha ha!
point being .... well you know the point, so behave yourself!
Stan
Mmmm, I'd eat those :-)
I've just started making bagels, and often have trouble getting the 2 ends to seal when shaping them. I'm using low-hydration dough, specially PR's whole grain recipe.
Would bumping up the hydration help by making the dough a little stickier? In his WGB book, Peter says you want the dough pretty stiff so that they don't fall apart when boiled, but the timely discussion above makes me wonder if going up to, say, 65% might help solve my sealing problem.
Eric
Roll four ounces of the dough into a log between 10-11 inches long, keeping the ends blunt. Then wrap it around your hand, squeeze the ends into the dough, then roll to seal them.
I bake Hamelman's bagles, which are 58% hydration and have never had any problems getting the ends to seal. I would think that a higher hydration would cause more problems, not to mention flabby bagels.
Sealing the ends like that always seems to me an awkward method (although I know Hamelman and other pros advocate it).
I just shape the bulk proofed dough into balls, flatten them gently, pierce the centre of each with a wooden skewer and work it around to widen the hole so that I can get my finger through it, then rotate and stretch around the finger until the bagel is the size I want, and of uniform thickness around. Seems so much simpler to me, and there is never an issue with ends not sealing.
Oh, and KenK, those bagels look pretty good! Interested in how they shaped up in da mouth!?
Cheers
Ross
Thanks to you both for the shaping advice and tips. For some reason I'm having trouble with the ends looking ragged and threatening to come apart after boiling and baking, but this may be a matter of practice with the rope method. I just may try the hole-poking method, too.
The funny thing is, I make the bagels every week for my wife. I may eat one on Sunday morning but otherwise, she thaws and toasts one for her breakfast every morning.
When I showed her this week's "defective" bagels, her response was "oh good, I like the ones without a hole in the middle". So, I can now desist taking pains to get the classic shape, from now on I'm going to poke my thumb in the middle and boil them.