Let There Be [Real] Bagels

Bagels: star of breakfast, always welcome around here. No kid of mine has ever refused a bagel.

Not all bagels are worthy of the name, however, as anyone lucky enough to eat a genuine New York/Montreal bagel will attest. Real bagels are dense and crusty; they stand up to cream cheese, lox, capers, onions, tomatoes, and any number of other toppings. The ones mass-produced for grocery stores are soft and highly processed: basically squishy bread cut in rounds to fool us. At our house, we've gotten used to these wimpy bagels over the years, but now--applying the Unprocessed Project's 5-ingredient rule--they've been turfed.

An annotated bagel recipe follows, below, along with a children's book recommendation (bonus!). Simply scroll down if you don't like reading corporate food labels. Myself, I'm increasingly fascinated by them.    

Here's the website blurb for Dempster's (a common Canadian brand) blueberry bagels:

Enjoy the authentic flavour of our traditional bagel, with a sweet hint of summer from juicy blueberries.

Hand it to the marketing department for audacity: "authentic" and "traditional" are not words I would have dared to apply to this product. (But credit them, at least, for actual blueberries instead of using blue-dyed apple chiplets--assuming "blueberries" = blueberries.)

And now the ingredients (drum-roll!):

Enriched wheat flour, water, glucose-fructose/sugar, dried blueberries (blueberries, sugar, sunflower oil), cornmeal, blueberries, salt, yeast*, malted barley flour, vegetable oil (soybean or canola), calcium propionate, natural and artificial flavours, monoglycerides, sorbic acid. May contain potassium sorbate. *order may change. May contain soybean, egg, sesame seeds, sulphites and milk ingredients. [J926] 

Every effort is taken to ensure that the ingredients and nutritional information listed here is accurate, however, data may change from time to time . . .

Note the prominent placement of sugars in this list, as well as the presence of preservatives (calcium propionate and potassium sorbate) and other additives (artificial flavours, monoglycerides, and [J926]--??). These ingredients may be fine if your main bagel-shopping goal is a reasonable facsimile that has an unnaturally long shelf-life, but clearly they don't meet the Unprocessed Project's goals. 

I would love to report that I jetted off to Brooklyn to score me some really-real bagels. But no, sadly, my life does not include regular visits to NYC. Nor do I have a wood-fired stove with which to recreate the furnace-like bagel bakery I once saw in Montreal. The good news? It's not difficult to make bagels at home. Time-consuming, but easily done.

Brooklyn Bagels (with commentary)

4-5 cups all-purpose flour

1 package active dry yeast

2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups hot water

2 tbsp honey or sugar

1 egg white

1 tsp. water

1. Combine 1 c. flour, yeast and salt in a bowl

Start time: 8 pm. 

 

2. Stir in hot water and honey; beat until smooth, about 3 minutes. Stir in enough remaining flour to make a soft dough.

That's simple enough, didn't even use an electric mixer. 
Easy so far.

3. Turn out onto a floured surface; continue to work in flour until dough is stiff enough to knead. Knead until smooth and elastic (about 5 minutes).

Only 5 minutes? My arms do not hurt.

 

4. Cover with bowl. Let rest 15 minutes

Rest: I can do that. Time to make tea.

 

5. Divide into 12 equal parts. Shape each into a flattened ball. With thumb and forefinger poke a hole into center. Stretch and rotate until hole enlarges to about 1 or 2 inches (2.5-5 cm). Cover; let rise about 20 minutes.

Tedious!  It's beyond me to produce equal-sized anything. 
I don't do precision baking . . . but they're not SO different. 
And once bagels are formed, more rest. 9:10 pm.

6. Boil water in a large shallow pan, about 2 inches (5 cm) deep. Reduce heat. Simmer a few bagels at a time about 7 minutes. 

That SOUNDS easy, but I can only boil 4 bagels at a time--3 batches per dozen. 
3 x7 = 21 minutes--and I've doubled the recipe, so 42 minutes just for pre-cooking. 
Switch to wine at 9:30.

7. Remove from pan; drain about 5 minutes. 

Worrying about breaking in transit from pan to drainer, but these are sturdy, dependable dough-blobs.

8. Place on a baking sheet [Recipe doesn't say whether to grease pan. I used parchment paper.]. Brush with mixture of egg white and water [here you can add sesame, flax or poppy seeds, or sprinkle with cinnamon, coarse salt or garlic salt].

Ruined 3 bagels before discovering the poppy seeds are ancient--clumping, stale tasting. 
Pitched container, but didn't tell anyone--heat of the oven will kill any germs.  
I made sure to test-eat a poppyseed bagel first--mother's little sacrifice. 
Not to worry, I've disinfected my stomach with alcohol, so I'm good. 
No hallucinations or anything as of 11:30 pm.

9. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, or until done.

3 pans = 90 minutes of cooking time. Tired. People are eating them as they cool. 
Half of them disappear immediately. At least they like them. 
Stash some in the freezer to manage supply.

Makes 1 dozen bagels

Source: The Culinary Arts Institute Cookbook (1985), p. 161.

And now for the BOOK! If you have young readers in the house, be sure to pick up or borrow a copy of Bagels from Benny by Aubrey Davis and illustrated by Dusan Petricic (Kids Can Press, 2003). About a boy who loves to help at his grandfather's bagel bakery, it's funny and sweet. Benny leaves bagels at the synagogue each week as a gift for God and apparently, God likes them.

1. Form bagels and let rise

2. Boil 7 minutes

3. Let drain

 

4. Finished!