July 24, 2011 - 7:10am
Bagels in Big Green Egg
I have a Big Green Egg (ceramic bbq). I'm really excited to cook my bagels in it instead of the oven. The problem...I don't know what temperature to cook the bagels at. I was thinking I'd try 600 degrees, but I thought I would ask others their experience with baking bagels in the BGE and what temperature they bake at. Thanks for your help! I'm making pizza on it tonight for the first time (I'm very excited about that) and was thinking that 600 degrees would be a good temperature for that also. Thanks again!
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This fellow cooks his bagels in his Little Black Egg at about 625F or so,
They are all whole grain and I don't think he boils them. Don't know if that makes a difference or not.
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5682.msg50211.html#msg50211
You may have to scroll down just a bit to get to the bagels. He also has pictures throughout that whole thread, which is basically his thread. Don't know if he is still posting lately.
That said, don't know if there is any "one best" temp. Experiment to find what works for you. Home oven bagels a typically cooked around 425F or so and seem to come out fine.
ps: I think villaroma makes his bagels with a fairly high hydration, whole grain pizza dough, so a traditional low hydration bagel dough may need to bake a little longer and at lower temp. But agian experiment. From my experience, as long as you are able to keep an eye on it, my doughs seem to come out ok whether I cook it fast and at a high temp, or slower and longer at a lower temp. Lots of qualifications to that, of course.
For a first run, I'd shoot for an Egg temperature that mimics the regular oven temperature as suggested in the original recipe. Significantly higher temps (like 600 instead of 425 or 450) may require adjustments to your recipe. I bake fairly often in my BGE, and I don't go much above 475 for anything except pizza. I can tell you from experience that higher in the dome is better for top browning. When baked on a stone atop the plate setter, my sourdough loaves remain fairly pale on top....so I flip them over during the last 5-8 minutes of cooking to brown the upper surfaces a bit more. Here are some of my Egged loaves:
It's true that home-cooked bagels are usually cooked at 475, but then again, most home ovens can't get all that much hotter. Wood fired ovens and commercial bagel ovens are usually 800 or more. Some WFO get way up to 1000!!
Obviously, if you go up to 800 degrees, expect cooking time to be much shorter. Experimentation is in order.
Cheers
Please post some pics of the items you bake in your BGE. We have one also, for a couple of months, but haven't baked in it yet. I've been wanting to do pizza and breads. It's hard for me to schedule a baking session because I am the prep cook and my son is the Egg expert. I have no idea how to operate the thing and he has no idea how to do the dough and prep work. It seems our schedules never work with each other's. He got his Egg so hot recently that he turned the gasket into charcoal. It wasn't intentional--there was a gap at the back where the ends should have met on the gasket which caused it to suck in air and get real hot. The store where he bought it gave him a replacement gasket, as it was a defect in manufacturing. I am really curious to try pizza and breads on it too. Good luck!
Lots of videos on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pizza+in+big+green+egg&aq=f
One, or some, may refer to the Komado, a very similar grill.