Bagel success, finally

I have been messing around with making bagels for a while, and although I have made bagels with good flavor, the texture has not been right (both the inside and the crust) and they have been ugly and wrinkly. Certainly edible but not the traditional bagel I was looking for. I finally tried Ceril Hitz's recipe from "Baking Artisan Bread:  10 Expert Formulas for Baking Better Bread at Home", with two minor midifications.  He uses half high-gluten and half regular bread flour, the only bread flour I have in the house is high gluten (KASL) so I used just that.  He boils his bagels in a honey solution - I use the traditional weak lye solution (2 tsp lye in 2 quarts of water).  I just topped with a little sprinkle of Kosher salt.  

I recently picked up a Bosch Compact mixer (my KA "Professional" - NOT - died, I have an Electrolux DLX on backorder, and I wanted a small mixer for small batches) and it handled the stiff dough without even getting warm, in a batch with just over 800 gm of flour.  This little machine is highly recommended.

Finally, tasty and PRETTY bagels!!!