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Chewy Home Bagels

Chewy Home Bagels

A firm dough, a bath and a good crust
Author:
Austin Welsh-Graham
| Source:
The Toasty Book of Bread
Categories: The Toasty Book of Bread Leavening Cooking Method Regional Route Bread Form Collection Main Material
Tags: Baker’s yeast Boiled before baking Northern and Eastern Europe Oven-baked Ring bread The Toasty Book of Bread Wheat
Ingredients
480 g White bread flour303 g Water (Lukewarm.)9 g Instant yeast12 g Fine salt14 g Dark brown sugar (For dough.)1.8 L Water (For bath.)28 g Dark brown sugar14 g Sugar (For bath.)
Description

A hole makes the resemblance easy to spot. Add a dip in hot water before baking and it becomes more intriguing. Obwarzanek and bagel bring two rings into Kraków's bread story, with different shaping, different records and different communities around them.

Chewy home bagels, shaped into rings and boiled before their oven bake. Makes 8 bagels.

Recipe
Mixing and kneading
1
Mix dough ingredients and knead firmly until smooth, about 10-15 minutes. Cover and rise 1-1.5 hours until noticeably puffy.
Shaping and layering
1
Divide into eight and round into tight balls. Cover and rest 30 minutes. Poke through each centre and stretch to a 4-5 cm opening.
Boiling and poaching
1
Heat oven to 220 °C. Bring bath water and its sugars to a gentle simmer. Cook a few bagels at a time for 2 minutes, turn and cook 1 minute more.
Cooking
1
Drain onto greased parchment-lined trays. Bake 20-25 minutes until well browned, turning bagels over after about 15 minutes. Bake trays separately if necessary.
Cooling and serving
1
Cool before splitting. Freeze spare bagels already halved once completely cool.
Notes

About 3 hours plus cooling. Wide saucepan, skimmer and two trays. Contains wheat and barley if using malt.

Give the centre room

The hole will shrink as the dough expands. A generous opening helps it remain a ring. Maintain a gentle simmer rather than a rolling boil, and give each piece room in the pan. This recipe's longer bath is part of its particular texture, so keep that timing for the first comparison.