When we lived in the city, and even when I still worked there, a lot more bakery bagels crossed our paths. I used to make a pilgrimage to some great bakery up at Yonge and Eglinton, and always bring back a special cache of them. But these days we end up with the more ordinary grocery store bagels, and the Montreal style ones have simply become a forgotten memory.
Now I've baked bagels before, though it was a long time ago. Not sure why, because they're not really any more difficult that any other shaped bread product. Yes, there's a handful of steps, but it's not rocket science, and they're pretty forgiving.
So I went looking for recipes, since I have no idea what one I used to use. And then I thought to look in one of the cookbooks that I've only been given in the last few years.
I love the cookbooks by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford. They're beautiful, full of fabulous food and culture and travel. Even the Home Baking one, which is a little more ordinary, has a wealth of variety. And yes, there's a bagel recipe.
Pretty much it's a straightforward recipe. There was only one ingredient that made me pause. They ask for some 'wheat malt syrup'. Oops. Even looking this up in the glossary wasn't helping a lot. Back in my brewing days I might have had some barley malt syrup on hand, but wheat? And I'm betting that's not something I'll be able to easily find without going further afield. And for 2 Tablespoons worth?
Some Googling suggested a substitution of molasses, which seemed pretty logical, and was more or less what I'd thought of on my own. I'm kind of surprised that the cookbook authors didn't make any kind of suggestion, since they're usually pretty good about suggesting workarounds for exotic items, but maybe it's only exotic around Wareham!
[I want to try this recipe again, with some preplanning, and I'll sprout some wheat and roast and grind it to make my own malt syrup. Once. Just to see...)
Anyway, I was already deciding these would be a somewhat experimental version. The cookbook gave instructions for basic mixing by hand, or for using a stand mixer. I'd love one of those but don't have one. I probably could have subbed in my Cuisinart, but I thought, heck, why not just use the breadmaker. I often use it to take things to dough stage. I find my hands and arms get stiff and arthritic when I knead, and then I tend to be inefficient about it. But even more, it provides a better environment for proofing my dough. It's not so much of a thing right now, in June, but throughout the cooler months our house isn't the most useful for getting dough to rise. The breadmaker really helps with that.
So that took care of the mixing and the first rising. Then I moved the dough to a bowl, punched it down and let it rise a second time.
After the dough has risen, you divide it into quarters and work each quarter of the dough, rolling it into fat cords, and then rolling the ends together to make the bagel shapes.
I did find that trying for 8 bagels from each quarter wasn't giving me sandwich-sized bagels, even with another short rise, and the puffing in the boiling water. I switched to six from each of the last three quarters, but I think I'd try making them bigger still next time.
After the bagel shapes had risen for another fifteen minutes, I'd managed to get a pot of water with some honey, to a boil, and dropped those bagel shapes in to puff and set. I think this is the step that may not occur with grocery store bagels. Or they have some other variant that gives them a more ordinary bread quality.
[For some reason, possibly only amusing to myself, I refer to this as the 'bloviation' stage. The bagel shapes puffed up some in the boiling water, and I would encourage them to bloviate to goodly sized bagels.]
From the boiling water, the hot wet bagel shapes were dropped into seeds, and rolled about. Then baked.
These turned out remarkably well, if small. I'm not certain if my tweaking of procedure had anything to do with that. I'd also ended up using one cup of whole wheat flour when I realized I didn't really have enough all-purpose. At least I had some regular wheat flour, as opposed to having to sub in some of my weirder historical cooking flours. I find it's useful to only change so many variables at once. At least the first time through!
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