Lily’s Blog, Dragon Absconded!
Baking Until I Drop

Nicely risen bagels, originally uploaded by Lilandra.

Better late than never. Here is the bagel post as promised.

The bagel recipe, as did the english muffin recipe, came from mom’s Betty Crocker Breads.

I went with the egg bagel variation. I’m not sure why.

Anywayz, typical bread recipe, make dough, let it rise, separate it into balls, shape, let it rise.

There were two shaping options: shape into ball, punch hole and widen or roll into a 6 inch rope and wrap it into bagel form, dab ends with water to stick ‘em together.

I had a feeling the rope version was better and would come out nicer (as you can see from the above risen picture) but I figured I would try both ways.

I was right!

Then I had to steam … no! no! no! simmer them in boiling water. And this is where everything went wrong or so it seemed. My bagels got all…crumply. And I got all worried. And I started having flashbacks to when mom made us bagels from this recipe when I was very young.

So, I made a note in my head to explore other recipes to see how else it is done; to see if this was wrong (even tho this cookbook has reall been quite good over the years). I searched online and you know what? They do simmer them. Most of the recipes do simmer! Exactly as this one. Some however say put in the pot of boiling water and they’ll sink and when they rise to the top, take them out. Mine never came out. I did find a few that said you could broil them. Mom thinks instead of simmering them in water maybe we should steam them over the boiling water. And I will try that next. That or the broiling anywayz.

And of course, because of this, they came out crumply.

But…happily it still looks nice. And it tasted great. My parents wondered if they were croissants though when they came home. And they tasted eggy…well they were egg bagels :-)

The texture inside was super.

All in all, it was good. I was proud of myself for making bagels. I want them to look more traditional however. Or…less crumply. Maybe not egg bagels? Or steaming or broiling.

And, it passed the ultimate test.

It tasted great as a tuna sandwich!

Mmmm :-)

Bagel and Tuna, originally uploaded by Lilandra.

Here’s the rest of the set.