Bagels

My husband has been nagging me to make bagels, he even looked for recipes and kept sending them to me and telling me to try them. He is from NJ and spent many holidays, and summers in NJ near NY. We have even been there many times since we have been married, and all he can talk about is their pizza and their bagels. Oh the bagels... are what dreams are made of, at least in his mind. So I finally gave in... I made homemade bagels. The recipe was curtousy of hubpages.com. They provided a great recipe and lots great comments on how to make sure these turn out right. I don't think I can express how excited he was that I was making these bagels. He wanted to help me. He was reading off the ingredients, and the directions. It was nice to work with him in the kitchen. That doesn't happen very often, so I was grateful. I decided to double the recipe since I had a feeling that if I made a single, it would last a total of 5 min. Then there would be no more later, when he would be craving them. So I doubled the recipe and here is what we got...

Ingredients (double batch)

8 cups of bread flour

2 tbsp sugar

3 tsp salt

2 tbsp vegetable oil

4 tsp instant yeast (2 pkg instant yeast)

3 cups warm water

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. You don't have to worry about soaking the yeast when you use instant yeast (most yeast sold these daysis instant yeast). The dough should feel stiff, but add the extra water if it's really stiff, or you can't get all the dry flour incorporated.

Plop the dough down onto the counter, and kneed for about 10 min, or until the dough is uniform and smooth.

Cut the dough into 8 equal sized balls, and let rest for 10-20 min.

(side note - cover dough with plastic wrap or towel, or the dough will get a crust while waiting)

Preheat your oven to 425F

Now, take each of the dough balls and using two hands, roll it into a little snake on the counter. When the snake is longer than the width of your two hands, wrap it around your dominant rolling hand. The dough rope should be wrapped so the overlapping ends are together at palm, near the start of your fingers. Now take the two overlapping ends, and use your palm to squish/roll these two ends together. Once the dough is fused, you should have a perfectly circular bagel-to-be! This is the only part of the process that can take a little practice before your bagels will look really professional. Don't get discouraged if they don't look perfect, it takes practice!

Let your bagels rest on the counter for about 20 min, and meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil, and grease a large baking tray lightly, you can just rub a splash of vegetable oil and rub it around.

After the 20 minute wait, your bagels will start to look puffy, and it's time to get them boiling! Add them as many at a time as you can to your boiling water without crowding them. Boil for about a minute, turn them over, and boil for another minute. Take them out and let dry for a minute and then place them on your oiled baking tray. Repeat until all the bagels are boiled.

Add the tray to the oven, and after 10 minutes, flip the bagels over, bake for another 10 minutes; and they're done!

Let them cool for at least 20 minutes, get the cream cheese ready and feast on what's got to be one of the best weekend brunch treats possible!

These were really fun to make and fairly simple too. I know the boiling sounds daunting, but it's really easy and nothing to stress over. I think that is what had me worried for a while. I'm most likely going to be making these again... soon. Our double batch is almost gone. We had 7 left this morning, (we made these yesterday). And now I have 2, to eat during the week. I need to start making these by the double batch every other day. I guess I'd better get started tomorrow. :) I hope you enjoy these and enjoy making them. I know we had fun!