Bagels

Reader Contribution by Sue Van Slooten
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We bakers are a strange lot. We love bread so much that we’re willing to make starters, bigas, go through all kinds of contortions, even get up at 3 a.m. to get things rolling. But boil? In water? Boiling water doesn’t usually enter into our repertoire, unless we’re going to make bagels, that is. By my account, bagels are one of the weirder breads going. Some accounts have bagels being invented in Eastern Europe, but I’ve heard other spots too. In North America, particularly in NY, this doughnut shaped bread is instantly associated with the Jewish specialty, bagel, lox and cream cheese. Lox is nice, but just give me the bagel, please.

The following recipe came off a bag of flour I once got at King Arthur Flour, and it’s about the only recipe I’d use. And yes, you’re going to need a large pot. This recipe makes about ten good size bagels, not huge, but not tiny. A perfect-size bagel. Bagels, incidentally, have grown over the years, to almost double the size they used to be, so these will be more like the traditional.And as anyone knows, bagels are well fought over depending on their toppings. You can really go crazy, from poppy seeds to sesame seeds to raisin and cinnamon. I used a pre-made topping mix from King Arthur, containing all kinds of seeds including fennel. One can always go for the Everything Bagel (my personal favourite). Once you try the basic recipe, the sky is limitless on what you can do with your bagel. Top it, toast it, turn it into a bagel chip. Cream cheese is pretty much a necessity, but butter can be nice too (particularly, but not limited to a cinnamon/raisin.Cream cheese is nice with that one too.). I used a dill cream cheese courtesy of Philadelphia this morning for breakfast, and it went really well. So here we go on our bagel adventure, very chewy, topping of choice:

Ingredients:

Dough:

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