September 21, 2011 - 7:52am
First time SD bagels Question
Hello Bakers,
I gave Mike's SD bagels a try yesterday and I noticed 2 things. 1) It takes SD bagels a long time to proof . It was very late midnight that I had them shaped so I retarded them too early and took them out to bake and ONLY passed water float test lastnight which they were in fridge for 20 hours. sorry I have no pics to post but I can assure you the crust was right on, but after I took them from the oven a few of them had the bagel hole close up...strange indeed AND crumb in some spots were doughy. Did I perhaps take them out of the oven too soon? maybe they needed additonal 4-5 minutes to bake?
Thank you in advance,
Ray
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If proofing is taking too long than you expected, it's alright to take them out of the fridge and finish proofing at room temperature, if that fits your schedule better. As long as they were cold retarded for relatively long time, like 8-12 hrs, flavour had developed quite well, so no need to wait for them to finish proofing in the fridge until the end.
Closing of the holes during boiling/baking happens usually when the holes weren't big enough when shaping. Try make them a little bigger next time.
Re doughy spots : Did you cool down bagels completely before you sliced it? If so, perhaps under baked. Malt (=sugar) in boiling water helps colour the surface of bagels when baking, so the crust colour can be deceiving sometimes.
Hope these help. :)
lumos
p.s.
Have you looked at the shaping video in my blog on WW sourdough bagels? It's a different method than Mike's or many other bakers, but that's one of the most popular method in Japan and quite reliable.
Lumos,
I bake bagels every week for the past 6 mos. this is the first time I get holes that close up on me and sort of deflate over the hole like so. I'm not sure what it is but it's not in the shaping. PS: I like the way you shaped those bagels, I've NEVER seen a bagel shaped in this manner , I'll give it a try on the next batch... Thank you!
Ray
What do you mean by 'deflate over the holes'? Did bagels come out sort of flatter than your regular yeast based bagels? If that's so, that used to happened to me (with my SD bagels, but not with yeast based) when I cold retarded for a very long time, like more than 16 hrs or so. Some people seem to bake SD bagels with very long retard quite successfully, but for some reason too long fermentation seems to have some detrimental effects to by SD bagels (paler and blotchy crust is another problem), so these days I limit the cold retard for SD bagels to up to 12 hrs at most, ofter shorter.
But if your holes closed up while bagels retained its shape but increased in volume while boiling/baking, I still think making holes bigger when shaping helps. SD bread and yeasted bread behave differently. What works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other.
lumos
Hi Lumos,
Best way I can explain what happened on "some" of the bagels... the inner walls of the inside of bagels sort of had a meltdown towards the center and created a little "belly button" and on those same bagels the outer lower edges sort of grew a small lip around them. I've never seen nor have I ever experienced such things like this on my weekly bakes of yeast bagels.
Thank you,
Ray
A kind of 'small lip' on the bottom on the outer edge that sometimes happened to me was always due to the 'seam' at the edge of the 'rope' when shaping/rolling the dough just happened to come to the edge of the bottom, sort of petruding to outside when boiling/baking because it grew in size. Do you think that's what happened to you?
Meltdown effect like you described is new to me. Sounds interesting.....a bit more like nuclear accident rather than bagel baking. :p
Very intrigued what caused it. But if both the small lip and the belly button happened on those 'some' bagels pnly, I have a slight suspicion it might be something to do with gluten strength (or the loss of it), but not 100%, especially since it only happened to some of the bagels in the same batch.
Let's wait together to see if someone who's a much better expert on bagels come and solve our mystery. ;)
lumos
I always did the poke a hole method way of shaping, that SD batch I shaped as prof. bagel bakers do where dough gets rolled and than sealed ( I think you solved that mystery) :). Thank you,
Ray