Recipe: Bagels

My bosses live up in Prestwich. I can only assume they enjoy inflicting pain on others, as I regularly watch them eat, in envy, as they devour authentic, sturdy-looking bagels. They assure me I must partake in a bite should I ever venture north of the river. The River Irk, that is, of course.

For, living in Levenshulme as we do, great bagels are in short supply. Until the brilliant Trove get in on the act, it's either trusty old supermarket-shelf New York Bagel Co or make our own. So I decided to rise to the challenge, mainly with the aid of a Christmas present from my sister, Marc Grossman's New York Cult Recipes, and insight from a few twitter foodies (twoodies, anyone?).

Upon initial inspection, bagels look like they could be tricky to make. And, though baking bread has become quite fashionable of late (so much so that I can't count the number of people I've spoken to recently who keep their own sourdough starter), it's still rare to overhear a bagel-related discussion. Whatever apprehensions you might have, making a bagel is actually pretty damn similar to making bread, but with the added simmering stage to give them that classic chewy crust.

The following recipe is almost 100% Marc Grossman's with very small variations. Thanks to Eddie Shepherd for the bicarbonate of soda trick and to Ashley Clarke for an alternative to Grossman's shaping of the dough. Bicarb is great at accelerating Maillard reactions, which helps the dough to brown when baking; there's also great fun to be had spinning bagels on one's fingers to create a hole.

A couple of notes on ingredients: you can buy potato starch from Unicorn in Chorlton and online; malt syrup isn't the easiest thing to find but Unicorn again and Holland & Barrett are your best bets.

Ingredients

Dry Stuff
750g of strong (i.e. bread) flour
7.5g (1.5 tsp) dried yeast

Wet Stuff
375ml lukewarm water
15g (3 tsp) salt
30g (2 tbsp) malt syrup or sugar (not surprisingly, malt syrup gives a darker crumb and maltier flavour)
22.5g (1.5 tbsp) olive oil

For the poaching
3kg water
15g (3 tsp) potato starch
15g (3 tsp) malt syrup
5g (1 tsp) bicarbonate of soda

Method

• Mix the dry stuff with the wet stuff to form a dough. Make sure to dissolve the salt and the malt syrup in the lukewarm water so they distribute throughout the dough more evenly.
• If using a stand mixer, knead with the dough hook on a  medium speed until you get a smooth elastic dough which pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If kneading by hand, flour or oil your work surface and work until you get the same effect.
• Divide the resultant dough into 10 portions (weighing the whole thing, dividing by ten, then portioning out on a scale works well).
• Shape the portions as per the following picture, rolling into a log and creating the hook:

• Alternatively, make a ball of dough, poke a hole through the middle with a couple of fingers and spin it around carefully to get the same shape (as advised by one Mr. A. Clarke).
• Now you're free to place the bagels on a sheet of baking paper or silicone mat and leave to rise for about 1 hour.

Bagels pre-rise

• Roughly half an hour before you're ready to make the bagels, preheat your oven to 230 degrees celsius.
• Blend the potato starch with about 250ml of the water and then mix with the remaining poaching ingredients and bring to a boil in a large saucepan. The bicarb might make the liquid foam wildly so keep an eye on it.
• Lower the heat so the water is simmering and poach each bagel (I imagine cooking more than two at once will be impractical in most household pans) for around a minute on the first side and then flip over for 30 seconds on the other.

Poaching bagels

• Remove bagels and place on your baking paper/silicone mat where you can top them with sesame seeds, poppy seeds or anything you like (sprinkles?).

Sesame bagels

• Place the bagels in the oven and lower the temperature to 210 degrees.
• Cook until done and dark brown about 20-25 minutes.
• Let cool for a while otherwise the crust will be a little too chewy (as we impatiently learnt!)

The finished article