Showing posts with label bagels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bagels. Show all posts

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Whole Grain Sourdough Onion Bagels with Vegetable Cream Cheese

I know, I know, I’m repeating myself. I’ve posted bagels before. But, those were the first bagels I had ever made. Since then, I’ve made lots of bagels, and I’ve been messing around with the types of flours and grains that I use in the dough, and that’s how I arrived at the version you see here. Last weekend, the Austin food bloggers gathered for a potluck brunch/baby shower celebrating the soon arrival of Addie’s second child. I got inspired to make bagels for the brunch when I saw the Barefoot Contessa making vegetable cream cheese for bagels on a re-run episode. Rather than having to bring sliced cucumber, tomato, onion, and whatever else, this was an easy way to add flavor and crunch to a bagel topping without needing to tote a million separate things to the party. For the bagels, I still follow the steps from the Breads from the La Brea Bakery book with changes to the type and amount of flour. In that book, there is a recipe for onion bagels, and I’ve tried it. Minced, fresh onions are sauteed and then patted dry before being coated onto the bagels. When I tried it, the onions didn’t stick, so I decided to use dehydrated onion flakes instead which work great.

I have the La Brea book open as I write this, and I just noticed the bagel page has poppy seeds and amaranth seeds stuck in the crease of the binding. I like evidence of a cookbook being used. Now that I’m familiar with the process, bagel making seems very easy. My whole grain version of the dough is made from starter, water, fresh yeast, white bread flour, wheat germ, oats, amaranth seeds, whole wheat flour, barley malt syrup, milk powder, sugar, and salt. The mixed dough is divided into 14-18 pieces, left to rest for a bit, and then those pieces are formed into bagels. The bagels are placed on a baking sheet, covered with a towel, and left to slowly rise in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, they are briefly boiled and then pressed into the coating of choice before being baked. I’ll include the recipe below since I’ve changed it from the original.

The chunky, vegetable-packed cream cheese was made with finely diced celery, carrots, and radishes, and sliced green onions. I added some thyme from my garden as well. The vegetables were mixed with room temperature cream cheese. It’s a good idea to use the cream cheese within a few days because as it sits, the vegetables begin to lose their crunch.

Looking back at my previous bagel post, I realize that I’ve since figured out how to form the bagel shape with an appropriate-sized hole in the middle. I’ve even gotten confident enough to make bigger bagels by dividing the dough into 14 rather than 18 pieces. I still tinker with the flours and grains each time I make a batch, but the formula I list below has worked well a few times. Maybe the surface coating is the place to get creative next.

Whole Grain Sourdough Onion Bagels
adapted from Breads from the La Brea Bakery

12 ounces water
1 cake packed fresh yeast
13.5 ounces sourdough starter
15 ounces white bread flour
12 ounces whole wheat flour
2 ounces raw wheat germ
2 ounces oats
1 ounce amaranth
2 ounces sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons barley malt syrup
6 tablespoons milk powder
semolina flour for dusting
1 cup dehydrated onion flakes plus 1 teaspoon salt for coating
(I have also used a combination of white and black sesame seeds, poppy seeds, fennel seeds, and salt.)


-Place water, yeast, starter, flours, wheat germ, oats, amaranth, sugar, salt, malt syrup, and milk powder in the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook and mix on low speed to combine. Increase speed to medium and mix until dough is smooth about four minutes. Turn the dough out onto a flour-free, that’s right no flour, surface and knead it for a few minutes by hand. Cover the dough with a cloth and let sit for ten minutes.

-Cut the dough into 14-18 pieces depending on how many bagels you want and how large you want them to be. When divided into 18 pieces, they’re a little smaller than what I usually see at bagel shops. Turn and tuck each piece of dough and leave the balls covered with a cloth to rest for 15 minutes.

-Take one piece of dough at a time and roll each into a nine to ten inch rope. Wrap the rope around your hand to form the bagel and pinch to seal the open ends. With the rope of dough around your hand, roll the dough up and back where the ends meet so as to seal. Place each bagel on a parchment-lined baking sheet that has been dusted with semolina flour and cover with a cloth as you continue forming bagels. This will require two baking sheets to fit all bagels. When all bagels are formed and covered, place baking sheets in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours.

-Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees F. Bring at least four inches of water to a boil in a wide stockpot, and remove bagels from the refrigerator to let them come to room temperature while the oven heats and the water comes to a boil. On a wide plate or tray, scatter the dehydrated onions and mix in the salt. As bagels are removed from the parchment-lined baking sheet, sprinkle the parchment with more semolina flour. When the water is boiling rapidly, drop three bagels at a time into it. Press them lightly with a wooden spoon to hold them below the surface for ten seconds. Turn them and let them cook for ten seconds more. Then, remove the bagels and place them rounded side down in the dehydrated onions. Turn and press to apply the coating and then place bagels back on the semolina-dusted, parchment-lined baking sheet. When one sheet is full of boiled and coated bagels, place it in the middle of the oven, reduce oven temperature to 400 degree F, and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Rotate the baking sheet after 10 minutes. After removing the first baking sheet, turn the temperature back up to 450 degrees F, and repeat baking process with second sheet of bagels.

I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.


Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sourdough Starter and Bread Adventure: 2 Bagels

The sourdough starter adventure continues. My second baking attempt with the starter wasn’t classic baguettes or a pretty fougasse, no, it was bagels. Why bagels? I had heard about the bagels in Nancy Silverton's Bread from the La Brea Bakery book several times, and I just had to know for myself. I’d been thinking about trying to make these bagels for months but needed to make a starter before I could try them. With starter successfully made, there was no stopping the bagel attempt. I don’t know if it was the drawn out anticipation of these bagels, or just shear pride in having finally baked some of my own, but these were positively the best bagels ever. I can imagine bagel baking becoming a regular part of my week. Oh, it’s Tuesday, I need to get the dough prepared and the bagels shaped so I can bake them tomorrow. Yes, I could see that happening.

That sounded almost confident of me, but in truth, this was another lost in the dark experiment. I simply followed the instruction exactly and hoped something good would come from it. Unlike other kinds of baking and cooking, with bread baking and working with sourdough starter, I have no idea what can and cannot be tweaked. Strictly playing by the rules is a very different experience in the kitchen, and maybe someday I’ll learn enough to get more creative.

These bagels required a two day plan. To begin, the dough was formed from water, fresh yeast, starter, unbleached bread flour, sugar, salt, barley malt syrup, and milk powder. There was a note about combining bread flour with vital wheat gluten to make a stronger flour, but I completely ignored that option and just used bread flour. I was instructed to use a mixer with a dough hook, but the dough came together so quickly and easily I think I could stir by hand next time. Branching out, already. Once formed, the dough was to be kneaded on a flour-free surface. Now, this scared me. No flour? It was sure to stick and be a complete nightmare to scrape together, so I had a bench scraper at the ready. I worried for nothing. This dough was incredibly easy to knead with no flour at all. It was very smooth and not at all sticky. It was covered and left to rest before being portioned into bagel-sized lumps.

The instructions state that you should be able to form 18 four ounce pieces. I ended up with 17, and they were all just shy of four full ounces, but I didn’t let that bother me. The pieces were again left to rest before being shaped into bagels. The shaping was a point of real uncertainty. I had no idea how much the dough would expand inward, so I wasn’t sure how large the bagel hole should be. I winged it, and left the bagels to rest in the refrigerator overnight.

Day two of the process included boiling, pressing into a seed mixture and baking. This was fun. The bagels were very easy to work with, and dropping them into the boiling water for just 10 seconds per side and fishing them out was a strange delight. I can’t express enough how great this dough was and how easy it was to handle. I combined poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and coarse sea salt on a plate and pressed each boiled bagel into the mix. Then, they went back onto a parchment-lined, semolina-dusted baking sheet and into a 450 degree oven which was turned down to 400. Twenty minutes later, I had to look at these lovelies and endure the excruciating wait until one was cool enough to handle. I soon discovered slightly burned fingers was a small price to pay for tasting one of these fresh and hot out of the oven. They were just chewy enough, and the flavor was so very good.

About the size of the bagel holes: I made them too small, and the bagels looked over-puffed because of it. I’ll get better at that I hope. I will, without doubt, be making more bagels, so I should figure it out eventually. I haven’t decided yet what the next sourdough adventure will be. Parmesan cheese bread, raisin brioche, and seeded sour are all contenders.


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