100 % Whole Multi Grain, Yeast Water & Sourdough Bagels

These aren’t your normal whole grain bagels - not that whole grain ones are at all normal much less made with SD and YW.  What we did was take the 25% of the sifted out portion of home milled grains and used that to feed the SD starter where the liquid for it was yeast water.

We love using the sifted out bran and endosperm portion to feed the levain.  This gets all the hard bits in the wet for the longest period of time to soften them especially if you retard the levain after the 2nd and 3rd feeding for 24 hours each time like we did.

When mixed back into white dough flour at a 25% portion this turns the dough into a 100% whole grain one and makes the bagels very tasty indeed.   In this case the whole grains were rye, wheat, farro, kamut and spelt.   So we got a nice mix grains which also makes for great flavor.

The YW has a tendency to mute the sour flavor somewhat, so the retarding of the levain twice and the dough for 20 hours was an attempt to get the sour back.   It was somewhat successful but the YW also makes the crumb moist and soft too.

The initial hydration was 58% but we kept adding more water to the mix just to get it to the point where we could knead it for 20 minutes .  If we were making bread with this flour mix, we would be at 85% -90% hydration using fresh milled flour.  So the 63% hydration of this dough is misleading.  In reality it was the hardest bagel dough to knead of all time and we have baked plenty of bagels over the years to know.  It felt like 50% hydration

We shaped the bagels two ways; the over the knuckle and roll to seal and the poke a hole in the center of the ball and enlarge methods.  We also boiled the 3 batches of 3 bagels each for different times, 30 seconds, 60 seconds and 90 seconds to see if there was a difference.  The (9) bagels weighed in at 108 each and we made a dough ball for the float test with the left over.

We also had several toppings, white sesame, black sesame, W&B sesame, white poppy, black poppy, white and black poppy and then made 3 all in that included the sesame and poppy varieties as well as oregano, basil, caraway and kosher salt.

Normally the mini oven would put some nice large blisters in the bagels using (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups but this time they were very small ones instead - probably due to the 100% whole grains and lower relative hydration than our usual 58% hydration of the 30% whole grain bagels.  Einstein was right - its all relative and probably why he is famous for cake like non NY Style bagels today.

The dough ball floated to the top of water glass in a split second so the cold proof worked well indeed.  The boiling liquid was a dark tea color of barley malt syrup and a teaspoon of baking soda.  The bagels were briefly put flat side down on the towel to remove excess liquid from that side before being overturned into the seeds. They were then placed flat side down onto parchment that lined the vented top cover of the mini’s broiler pan.

The steaming cups were added and the assembly was placed into the mini at 500 F with a ¼ C splash of water into the bottom of the oven as the door was closed.  After 2 minutes, the temperature was turned down to 475 F for an additional 6 minutes of steam.  After 8 minutes of steam the cups were removed and the temperature turned down to 425 F, convection this time. After 8 more minutes, 16 total, that bagels were done and they were removed to the cooling rack.

Tzitzel grilled cheese sandwich with all the normal fixings on bagel shaping day.

These bagels browned up nicely and no difference could be detected between those that took a longer bath than others.  Small holes but they were very crispy with glass like crust  - just what we want.  The crumb was more open than we expected and it was also very soft, moist and chewy too – another plus.

How did those truffles get in there?

These are such awful nice bagels you forget they are 100% whole grain and healthy too.   They are our new favorite bagel and by far and away everything we are looking for in that elusive NY bagel.

We had them toasted with a schmear of CC and the dough ball was buttered and red raspberry jammed – delicious.  Can’t wait for Saturday’s smoked salmon dressing the top of these fine bagels – a topping we got for last Saturday and our 26th anniversary – but forgot it when I realized there wasn’t a decent bagel in the house.

Who took a bite out of that smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel?  Thank goodness the bacon, brie, butter, minneola marmalade and egg half is still untouched!  Had to wait for Saturday brunch to taste these bagels properly:-)

Formula