The Bagel Debargle

My first encounter with bagels was unpleasant enough to discourage me from trying them until I met Paul, some 2 or 3 years later. My then work colleague, Peter, who lived in London, decided to treat us by bringing everyone breakfast. I was thrilled. The arrival of Peter in the office always meant treats like Easter Eggs or large bars of chocolate or fish and chips, and as someone who is appallingly lazy at eating that first important meal of the day, I am forever devoted to someone who brings me breakfast.
I peeked in his little bag of breakfast and saw raisin cinnamon bagels, produced by the New York Bagel company. I hopped up and down a little. Back then, Bagels were prohibitively expensive and the more expensive a product, the more I want to try it.
Unfortunately, Peter forgot that we didn't have a toaster at work or any butter, jam or cream cheese so we had to eat them untoasted and dry. I might also mention at this point that Bagels were so unpopular ten years ago that they would sit on supermarket shelves for weeks and weeks, impervious to the normal blue moulds that generally inhabit old bread.
I politely declined a second bagel and remained hungry until lunchtime. After that I often waxed lyrical about how bagels were really over-rated and that my friend from London said that the Jewish community pronounced it "bar-gle" and not, as I had thought "bay-gle" Suffice to say, this nugget of misinformation produced a barely disguised snigger from Paul when I spouted my bagel bargle philosophy to him. He could hardly wait to re-educate me.
The true etymology of the word bagel is mixed but it is widely agreed that it is either derived from: a) the Austrian word beugal, meaning stirrup. A Jewish Austrian baker produced the bagel, originally in the shape of stirrup for King Jan Sobieski to commemorate the victorious cavalry charge over the Turks or
b) from the Polish beygl, a gift presented to women during childbirth. One can only assume that they were expected to bite down on the beygl during the pain of contractions. Thank heavens that a more common gift these days is an epidural.
As the Ashkenezi Jews immigrated to New York in the middle of the 19th Century, they brought these tasty yeast treats with them and they are synonymous with New York, despite wide-spread popularity throughout America and much of the Western world.
The most common filling for the Bagel is Lox and Cream Cheese. Lox, I discovered only in the last few years is Yiddish for Smoked Salmon (Lox itself being a natural development of the words Lachs, Lacs, Lax, Laks and finally Laeks, all of mean Salmon).
The texture of the Bagel is unusual, due to the procedure of boiling the formed bagels before baking (if the Bagel is not boiled and just baked, it becomes a Biali). The crumb is very dense and chewy and in my opinion, unpalatable before toasting. However, homemade Bagels are another story altogether.
After having a mixed reception to bagels, I have come to the conclusion that some pre-packaged ones are dreadful, Sainsbury Supermarket makes superb ones and as for McDonalds filled Bagels - Oy Vey!
Yet since that first morning together in America, when my husband served me hot bagels, dripping with butter, cream cheese and grape jelly, I was hooked.
Ever since, I have wanted to make my own and yesterday Paul and I finally got around to it. I have unofficially labelled Sundays as Baking Day, a day for getting covered in flour and getting thrilled at the thought of what some yeast and a hot oven can produce.
I have been reading through one of Paul's revered books on baking, part of the Good Cooks series by Time-Life, simply called Bread. There is one simple reason why I trust this book, and that is because Richard Olney wrote the entire series. Paul's reason is, he has never had a failure from the book yet, despite it being nearly 30 years old. I would highly recommend it to anyone, experienced or novice.
As with the Brioche, I had always imagined Bagels to be labour intensive, time-consuming and probably a bit tricky, but since becoming a Daring Baker, nothing seems too far out of my grasp nowadays. In fact, Bagels are just as easy as the Brioche was. The dough is a joy to handle. It is soft but not unworkably sticky (unlike the Brioche). There is a rising time of only an hour for the dough, a 10 minute proving time for the formed Bagels and then the cooking, which involves a 15 second dunk for each raw bagel in boiling water, a generous brush of egg-wash, the topping of your choice and then baking for 30 minutes or thereabouts.
My one issue with this recipe was the size of the final product. The recipe states that you will produce about 24 bagels from the dough and we did. I naturally assumed that they would either double in size during the 10 minutes proving (foolish, I know), or, failing that, double in size during the rapid boil or, in case of emergency, double in size in the oven.
As you can see, this was not the case.
But they are dinky aren't they? So, what I would recommend is this: if you are planning on making BBLTBs (Baby BLT Bagels) like we had to, proceed as we did, cutting the ball of dough in half, then each half into quarters and again until you reach 24 small balls of dough. Or, just cut the dough in half and stop halving when you reach 12. And only then should you have normal size bagels.
The fun part is deciding what toppings to add to the boiled bagels. Because we had so many, we decided to make a good variety. Sea Salt (Paul's favourite - he said they reminded him of soft pretzels), Black Sesame Seeds, Caramelised Onions (my favourite), Parmesan Cheese and finally Demerara Sugar and Cinnamon. Straight from the oven they are a delicious bite-size morsel, great to nibble on whilst watching the True Movies Channel (as we spent much of yesterday doing), but as with all bagels, they are best lightly toasted and filled. How you choose to serve yours is up to you, but if you want to make these at home, here is the simple recipe:
BAGELS: makes 24 small 'uns or 12 regulars
Ingredients:
3.5 Cups Plain Flour
7g Dried Yeast (1 packet)
1 Cup Milk (I used skimmed)
4 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Caster Sugar
1 Egg, separated
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
Toppings of your choice
METHOD:
Heat the milk to just before boiling point, remove from the heat and stir in the sugar and butter until melted. Pour into a large bowl leave to reach tepid.
Sprinkle over the yeast, whisk well and leave for 10 minutes to activate and start to go foamy.
Meanwhile, gently mix the egg white with the salt. Pour this into the yeast mixture, beating well, and the incorporate the flour until a soft dough starts to form.
Tip out the dough onto a floured surface and knead for about fifteen minutes, or until soft, smooth and feels 'alive' under your fingertips.
Place in an oiled plastic bag (it's what the recipe says!) to rise for an hour. It will double in size to bear this in mind when choosing your bag!
Preheat the oven to 200c.
Remove the dough from the bag. On a floured surface, cut the dough into half and then half again until you have either 12 or 24 pieces of dough.
Roll into balls and using either a piece of doweling or your finger, make a hole in the middle of each ball.
Leave for 10 minutes, during which time they will rise a little.
Meanwhile, bring a large pan of water to a rapid boil and lightly oil a couple of large baking sheets.
After the 10 minutes, drop five or six of the bagels into the boiling water for no more than 15 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on the baking sheet. Once the sheet is full, brush each bagel with the egg yolk (mixed together with a little water) and sprinkle over the topping of your choice.
Place in the oven and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown.
Serve as per your own preference and enjoy!