What is the purpose of the bagel flipping board? What is the difference in crust, crumb, etc between bagels baked for 3-4 minutes on the board and flipped onto the deck and bagels baked directly on the deck, or on parchment paper on the deck?

Hi all, 

I recently purchased Inside the Jewish Bakery, and was thoroughly excited to try out the New York bagel recipe -- it's an excellent book and highly recommend.

I almost always use Reinhart's bagel recipe from BBA. 

The bagels had a beautiful color and a crispy exterior. However, I found them to be very dense. I know bagels are supposed to be dense, but these were a bit over, imo.

I used what they call "Baker's Flour"  here in Australia...not sure the flour was a contributing factor to the denseness. 

I am leaning towards my fridge being too cold?? I don't know the exact temp.

Further, the bagels didn't float immediately, when I dropped them in the boiling water -- I am pretty sure this is a bad thing.  Bagels were baked @ 460F for approx 25 min.

Any clarity/comments would be much appreciated!

Thanks, 

Michael

The many nice bagel posts lately have spurred me on toward bagel making.    I was excited to see that In The Jewish Bakery has a recipe for Montreal bagels.   I grew up on New York Bagels which had made their way to St. Louis by the 1960s.    It was a revelation when I stopped for a snack in the Ottawa Airport one day to find a bagel that was completely different but quite delicious.   That was almost 20 years ago, and since I stopped working in Canada,  Montreal bagels have been few and far between.   That is set to change.

Ok.   My shaping needs work, but that doesn't interfere with breakfast for lunch. 

These are quick bagels - from mix to plate in around 2 hours, and so not as much flavor as their overnight retarded New York cousins.   But delicious all the same, a tasty treat. 

Had my TV debut this morning and it went well! You can watch me rolling bagels and kibitzing on camera on the nybakers resources page www.nybakers.com/resources.php and a link to the recipe itself on the nybakers homepage.

Enjoy!!

Stan

I make bagels frequently using a variation of "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" recipe found @ http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/bagels.  My changes amount to retarding in bowl (vs. shaped) and shaping in the morning, and adding lye to the boiling water (great overview of Lye Bagels @ http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10877/lye-bagels).  So in short - I am learning a lot on here!  Anyhow - here are a few pictures of my last batch.  I am liking the brown against the white.

Hey all... I have a bagel recipe I've been perfecting, and it calls for a glaze of egg whites with a little water.  When I glaze them, however, it seems like most of the time (not all) the top crinkles and puckers -- it looks like the glaze is drying and pulling on the top surface of the bread while it's doing its oven spring.  Yet adding more water to the glaze doesn't seem to make a difference.  I just read about adding salt to egg whites, and I'll give that a shot this time.

The bagels need to be pretty dense without large bubbles, and the yeast is aggressive, so I tend to mix it, shape it, glaze it, and throw it in the oven all in one go to keep it from rising too much.  The surface of the dough isn't dried out when I apply the glaze, but it's hardly sticky either.  I'm using a standard gas oven at about 400 degrees, I think. As a side note, I'm using a gluten-free recipe, but the dough kneads and shapes just like standard wheat flour dough, and I haven't had trouble with milk or whole egg glazes in the past.  Any ideas about what could be causing this?

Thanks!

--Alison

Dragels (dray-gulls like bagels)
My second attempt at bagels made with a Durum sourdough starter and Durum flour. Changes from first attempt; hydration lowered to 57% and honey substituted for molasses.
Mixing and kneading were difficult at this hydration although the dough softened after a few hours of fermentation and proofing, yet the dough didn't have the strength expected of such a low hydration. This is half of the dough originally mixed, the other half is sitting in the fridge for tomorrows bake. Hopefully more bacteria from the overnight fermentation will strengthen the dough.

Third one to follow ~ Jim

Dragels (dray-gulls like bagels)
My first attempt at bagels made with a Durum sourdough starter and Durum flour. This is a seat of the pants, see what happens, work in a few different ways to make bagels. I'll go into detail and a formula when I'm happy with the results.

Quick rundown: sourdough Durum dough treated like a no knead with an overnight rise in the fridge. Out of fridge, stretch and fold, one hour bulk ferment, shape and short proof. All good up to this point. Poaching; didn't go very well as illustrated by the odd look, too much molasses made them too dark, once in the poaching fluid they became very weak and wanted to fall apart. Did my best to hold them together and here are the results.

As far as taste; not too bad. The molasses over powered the sweet I was expecting from the Durum.

For me it was fun and enlightening.
Bakers always rise to the occasion ~ Jim

I have been working on learning to mix, shape, ferment properly, boil and bake Bagels. Everyone in our household and all of my friends and neighbors likes these delicious breads and are happy I have taken up with this obsession.I have migrated to using Hamelman's formula for home bakers which makes 12-120 gram bagels. It's a very simple ingredient list, adding only malt powder to the basic 4. When I am making a batch destined for my In-Laws, I swap whole milk for 20% of the water to make the crumb softer. There are lots of bagel recipes out there. I say, find your favorite multi grain recipe and mix it to 58-60 % hydration. I frequently make a 20% rye or WW mix which we love. That's what is shown below.

There are a lot of small nuggets of information in the text below. I have discovered there are many variables and "must do" bits of advice out there on this subject. I want to finally get to the bottom of this and find out what matters and what doesn't

My personal goal is to find an easy way to make delicious Bagels quickly in the morning. No complicated thinking at 5:30 AM please. It's a two day process, and the putsey stage is the evening before, mixing, kneading and shaping. The next morning, I get up, turn on the oven to 500F, turn on the stove to boil the water I drew the evening before. It takes 45 minutes to bring my stone up to 430F. So at 45 minutes I boil the first set of 3 bagels and prepare them for baking. I leave the sheet pans in the refrigerator until just before I'm ready to boil the dough in the water. No bench time to warm the dough. They usually float right off and I'm only using 1/2 teaspoon of IDY instead of the 3/4 tsp Hamelman calls for.

My first major discovery was that I could make at least as good of a dough by hand as I could by machine. It is far easier to work the flour and water together by hand than it is to try to use my DLX mixer fitted with the dough hook. The DLX isn't taxed by the job but at 58% hydration, the dough just doesn't wan t to be moved, once the gluten starts to form and become strong. I can stand there pushing and prying the strong dough into position so it will travel around the bowl and be forced between the bowl and hook. Honestly it's much easier to just combine the ingredients by hand in the bowl. A series of 3 stretch and folds at 20 minute intervals will produce a beautiful smooth dough and well developed gluten.

The next thing I wanted to understand is the whole shaping thing and if the requirement to refrigerate overnight is warranted. I am convinced that the slow extended fermenting in the refrigerator is a beneficial step in developing a better flavor. AND, if you shape your bagels right after mixing/fermenting briefly, they stick together and don't come unglued in the boiling water. As a sub set of shaping I get best results when using the dog bone shape and then grinding the ends together as shown in Ciril Hitz video on bagels The pre-shaping method Hitz demonstrates is beautiful. I had to watch it several times to fully appreciate the subtle aspects of his technique. He uses the Dog Bone roll out which I have found works perfectly if I remember to remove one finger and "grind" out the joint using 3 fingers. If you are at all perplexed about making bagels, do your self a favor and watch the Hirtz video.

The next decision is weather or not to use ice water after the boil as Hamelman suggests or to place the boiled circles on a rack to cool and dry briefly before seeding. Hamelman says to boil 1 minute each side, Hitz says 10 seconds. I like my results using a 1 minute per side. As for the ice water bath or not, I think Hitz method of a shorter boiling time followed by cooling/drying on a rack works fine and simplifies the production line on the stove top. I don't see any benefit of adding an ice water bath. It's just one more thing to mess with, adding ice after each batch.

I wanted to be a purist and use bagel boards. If I was using a rotating oven in a production setting, bagel boards would be the answer to drying out the bottoms and getting a well done product. After baking maybe 15 batches of bagels during the last few Months, most using my home made red wood boards. I can see a minor difference on the bottom but certainly nothing that would indicate the need to flip the bagels over after a few minutes. This process is risky for me and I frequently end up having one or more not turned  over properly and need to go in the back of the oven with tongs to fix my errors. It is way easier to seed the dough after the rack and place them on the parchment they proofed on in the cooler. The sheet pan slides in on top of the stone nicely. Yes, I have been steaming when I bake on a sheet pan. The wet webbing on the  boards negates the need for additional steam.

One other small thing I have found I can eliminate that makes the process a little cleaner is to skip the corn meal. I noticed Hitz places his seeded bagels on clean parchment where most other authors say to sprinkle cornmeal on the proofing sheet. I have been spraying a light coat of Pam on the parchment to make it easier to remove the cold dough from the paper, with out disfiguring the shape on the way to the hot water. The boiling water stays cleaner and there is no down side after baking. So again I find the Hitz method to be preferable.

The last big question is what to put in the water, if anything. I have tried a heaping Tablespoon of Baking Soda, Barley Malt Syrup, Honey, Molasses and Sorghum Syrup. Oh and also plain old water too. Hamelman says use enough Malted Barley to make a dark tea. That's about 2 tablespoons. Hitz says something similar or to use honey for a slightly sweet flavor on the crust.  Honestly, I can't taste any difference but it does smell nice when the barley is steaming in the pot. All of the add in ingredients smell great in the pot but not much of that good aroma is transferred to the bread product. So, if you feel like you have a pallet that is sophisticated enough to notice, go for it. But if you thought you had to wait for another day because you didn't have Malted Barley, don't bother waiting. The crusts MIGHT be a wee bit softer, less crispy if you use a syrup. Take a good hard look at the photo below of two bagels side by side. One was boiled in clean water, one was boiled in water with a large scoop of Baking Soda. Both have a soft sheen and are very close to the same color. Both boiled for 2 minutes total,  17 minutes @500F with steam for 4 minutes on a sheet pan.

I hope this lengthy write up is of interest to those of you who have hesitated in making Bagels. I know they seemed complicated from start to finish at first. I was sure if I did a few batches I could make uncomplicated the process and gather the proper equipment to be able to easily make authentic NY style water bagels.

Eric

Column 1 and 4 are boiled in water only. 2 and 3 had Baking Soda added.

Can you tell which bagel was boiled in water only and which had baking soda mixed in? I had expected the one with baking soda to be darker. If there is a color difference, I'd say the one on the left is slightly darker. That's the water only version.

The crumb structure is still more open than I would like. I have reduced the amount of yeast and I am lowering the DDT temp to try and control the activity. But, it looks pretty good now and has a nice chew. This is 80% All Trumps High Gluten flour and 20% fresh ground WW from Country Creations (Flourgirl51).

Baked on parchment on a sheet pan. Certainly not burned and just a nice crisp crust on the bottom.

Ok, so here are my bagels, not my first time making them.  I've actually been making bagels for several years now.  I haven't had any complaints about them, in fact, many people say they really like them!  However, I was on a quest to see if I could get more out of my bagels, see if I could make them better.  So, I tried Peter Reinhart's recipe, minus the baking soda in the water on most of the bagels. I did do 2 bagels in the baking soda.  I always thought that having baking soda in the water would make it taste a lot like a pretzel and I don't think that's how a bagel should taste!  Well, I was wrong, well according to my husband :)  Definitely a little tougher crust, in a good way and the malt adds a little but more flavor!  Other than that, they taste just like the bagels I've been making for years. 

But.....I'm not sure that the process I went through makes this bagel any better than the way I've been doing them.  I've been following a very simple recipe, flour, water, yeast, salt and sugar. Let is rise until double, divide into 4 oz pieces, shape, let rest for 20 minutes, boil for a minute each side and bake for 15-20 minutes at 400-425.  If I left the bagels to rise overnight in the fridge, they would turn out the same.  I just don't know if the retarding process is really necessary.  What do you think?