April 19, 2008 - 9:43am
Bagel Questions
Hi Everybody,
I am baking bagels today its been awhile. I am following the recipe in Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads.
I want add chopped garlic to some of them, should I saute it first or just add it raw?
In the book they form the bagels by rolling the dough into a dowel shape and then join the ends together.
In the past I have used the poking my thumb through a round piece of dough to form them.
Is there some advantage to rolling vs poking? The recipe uses 450 for 15 minutes then rotate and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes. This seems like too long to me. Is there an internal dough temperature I should shoot for?
Thanks
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I think I would saute or, better yet, roast the garlic before adding it to the bagels.
Either shaping method will work.
25 minutes seems like a long time to me too, but I've never tried whole grain bagels. Perhaps they are dense enough that they need that long to cook through.
For my Garlic-Onion Bagels, I take the easy way and used the pre-minced garlic in a jar. It's already cooked, and easier to add. I use dehydrated onions too because I just have to measure them out and I think the flavor is more concentrated, and convenience of course.
I do the poke hole and stretch method, I get better results than the rope and crimp. I also make about 6 dozen for Farmer's Market, so it's easier to get uniformly divided dough into balls and shaping with the poke and stretch.
I also bake mine at 425 for 22 minutes, rotating halfway through. I think that exact baking time depends on your oven and needs to be customized based on experience.
You will find all kinds of advice that the "only" way to make "real" bagels is the rope-and-loop method. I tried it a few times and it was clear it would take more practice and dexterity than I could provide. So I form my dough into a rough log, cut the dough with a metal dough scraper and weigh on my scale, then pre-shape the cut pieces into a ball. I keep these balls under a sheet of plastic wrap until they are all measured out, then I poke and rotate to get the desired shape. They end up looking and tasting great so I don't worry about the advice on how to do it "right".
I use the Reinhart BBA recipe that Floyd exerpted here, which calls for about 10 minutes at 475. I preheat my stone to 550 and bake for 10 minutes at 500, then assess. Usually they take 4-5 minutes more than that. Although I am usually an obsessive internal temp measurer for bagels I go strictly by the color of the crust. I figure that the inside can always use more, but if the crust is too dark my family won't eat them.
Good luck! I have found that bagels are actually about the easiest bread to make once you have the technique down.
sPh