Umami Bomb: Seaweed Shio Koji Twisted Sourdough Bagel

I have to admit, my love for sourdough and whole grain happened more recently, bagel is the one that stole my heart first. I love it for its chewy and doughy texture that’s much more satisfying than an airy slice of sandwich bread. It’s therefore not difficult to predict at all that I gradually switched from white sandwich bread to more hearty whole wheat bread and finally to whole grain sourdough. My love for bagels still lingers, though after all the flavorful whole grain sourdough, they might taste slightly less exciting. Easy solution: incorporate whole grain, sourdough and new flavours, and you get bagels with both flavour and texture!

Umami Bomb: Seaweed Shio Koji Twisted Sourdough Bagel

Soaker:

20g      7%            Toasted wheat bran

3g        1%            Coarse masa bits

23g      8%            Water

For dough including soaker:

228g    80%            Whole wheat flour (20g bran from the 228g shifted out)

57g      20%            Masa (3g coarse bits from the 57g shifted out)

220g    77%            Water (23g water taken out for soaking)

30g      10%            Starter

30g      10%            Shio koji (Japanese salty fermented rice paste)

10g        3%            Vital wheat gluten

5g        1.8%           Seaweed flakes

 ___________

300g    100%            Whole grain

250g     83%            Total dough hydration (next time I’d down it to 75%)

Combine all ingredients under soaker and let the bran to be fully moistened overnight. Roughly mix all dough ingredients including soaker and let ferment for 8 hours at room temperature.

Stretch and fold for a few times then divide the dough into four equal portions. Let rest for 10 minutes. Take one portion and dust it with flour, roll it into a 40cm strip. Fold it along the middle so you get a U-shaped strip, cross the two strips over each other and pinch the end together so that you have a twisted rope. Connect the two ends of the rope to form a O-shaped dough. Repeat for the rest of the dough.

Let rise for 1 hour at room temperature. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 250°C/480°F with steam and boil a pot of water. Dissolve a tbsp brown sugar into the boiling water. After the 1 hour rise, boil the bagels for 30 seconds on each side and let a towel soak up excess water before placing on a cornmeal lined baking sheet.

Bake on the upper rack (I use a toaster oven) for 15 minutes with steam than bake without steam for 5 minutes more until the internal temperature reaches 190°F. 

Do note that the shio koji speeds up the fermentation process dramatically. Usually it takes 12 hour for the 10% starter to fully ferment 100-105% hydration whole grain dough yet only 8 hours are needed for this recipe even if the hydration is only 83%.

The dough is easy to handle with a moderate hydration level for 100% whole grain but I’d definitely down the hydration from 83 to 75% for a chewier texture. With this level of hydration, the bagels are a bit too soft for my liking. However, the crust is crispy and nicely developed even though there are no large blisters.

They are not beauties...but the taste compensates.

The aroma of the seaweed shines through with subtle corn sweetness from the masa. I prefer masa to regular cornmeal as the former has a much richer corn taste to me. I’ll up the shio koji to 45g next time as it is not really tasted so the bagels produced lack the complex taste profile of it and are not salty enough. (A word of caution: the shio koji I used is homemade and the salt I put is less than the common practice, do check the salt content if you use store-bought.)