New York Style Bagels

Roopa

The next bread from pastry school was bagels. The dough for this was quite a bit different than the other breads. Interestingly enough, the recipe was very similar to the baguette recipe but in different proportions. Bagels have one of the driest doughs. I never liked working with sticky dough, but after this class, I think sticky doughs are much easier to work with than dry doughs. I traditionally have added flour to make sticky dough easier to work with, but I have since learned better!

INGREDIENTS (12 bagels)

800 g bread flour
5 g fresh yeast
450 mL water
16 g salt
5 g malt syrup or powder

DIRECTIONS

Create a flour dome with yeast, water, and malt syrup in the middle and mix together.
Knead dough until even consistency is reached. The dough should be very smooth.
Shape the bagels immediately after kneading. Split the dough into 8 portions, and roll each out into a long cylinder. Open up the seam and one end and join the other end. Turn upside down so the seam is on the bottom.
Leave the bagels covered in a fridge overnight for a cold fermentation.
The next day, bring the bagels to room temperature
Bring water and some malt syrup to boil. Poach the bagels in the water for ~20 seconds each, and place back on the baking tin.
Let the bagels dry, and bake at as high a temperature as possible until the colour is appropriate

Notes:

An ideal baking temperature is 600F or 700F. It’s best to bake the bagels as hot as possible. The dough is already extremely dry, so a longer baking time results in a more dry bagel.
The poaching allows the moisture to get locked into the bagel. Yeast dies at 60C, so the longer you boil the bagels, the more yeast dies, and the denser and chewier the bagel becomes.