Equipment

The Breadmaster, Peter Reinhart, is keen on mise en place. That is, having everything ready to go in order to ensure your baking project goes well. So I snapped a pic of what it takes to make bagels:

… though of course I realize now that I’m forgetting the dry measuring cup, the baking sheets, the saucepans for boiling, the baking soda, and the honey.

Sponge

4 cups bread flour
1 tsp instant yeast
2 1/2 cups warm water

Mix until it’s all hydrated; cover with a wet towel; let it rise about 2 hours. Should poof up to about double size.

Kneading

To the sponge add:
1/2 tsp instant yeast
0.7 oz salt
3 3/4 cups bread flour (give or take)
1 tbsp honey or malt syrup
water, as necessary

Knead it by hand (will jam up a bread machine) for at least 7-8 min. Check for the “windowpane” effect—stretch the dough out in front of a light source and if you can see the light passing through it in a golden hue just before the dough tears, then you’ve got good gluten formation and you’re done kneading. If not, keep at it.

Dough rounds

Knead the dough until it is silky—”tacky but not sticky” is the usual Reinhart mantra. Tear off pieces about the size of dinner rolls—4.5 oz each. It pays to measure because then you’ll come out with a consistent number of bagels in each batch, and they will be the same size. Eyeballing it can lead to bagels that look the same but cook up into wildly different volumes.

Dough coils into bagels

Really I should have videoed this, since it’s a subtle technique that takes a lot of screwing up to get the hang of. What’s most important here is keeping the dough moist enough that it can stick to itself, but tacky enough that you can roll it out without it sticking to your hands. There’s no real way to describe this; you just have to do it a bunch of times:

Ready for rising and fermentation

The shaped bagels go on trays, then get covered with wet towels to keep moisture in while they rise slowly in the fridge overnight. We’ll be ready for boiling and baking a la manana:

Removed the croissant dough from the fridge and prepared for baking this afternoon.

Was not sure how much the Sur la Table recipe would make so I attacked the whole batch. Twenty-two in all, half of which I made as chocolate.

Working with the dough is not a fast process. With a whole batch, the second half had started rising on the counter by the time I had the first dozen prepped. Should probably try to chill or freeze the other half next time.

Baking is absurd. So much butter just spills out of the croissants. Good luck that I used two pans with lips on the edges.