Hi all
I am a young British student who got inspired to bake through the TV programme the Great British Bake Off. Furthermore, I wanted to learn how to make my own bread as I didn't want to eat the bread in supermarkets with a plethora of preservatives and god knows what else in them. I sought information on the topic and bought Paul Hollywood's book "bread". I managed to make a couple of tasteless flat yeasted white sandwich breads and sourdoughs, not happy with my current efforts I bought James Morton's "Brilliant Bread" book and what a revelation! In the book James explains the science of baking in a simple and easy to understand way as well as providing simple easy to follow recipes. My goal is work my way through the a lot of the recipes in the Brilliant Bread book and document my bakes along with some notes on how my particular bakes went!
- Brian Boyie's Blog
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First up, today's bake. Bagels with the traditional poppy seed finish:
500g bread flour
8g salt
7g fast acting yeast
250g tepid water
15g golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarb
poppy seeds to finish
- mix ingredients, kneed, first rise (double in size)
- shape 12 balls and and pierce the your thumb through the dough until you have a bagel-like shape
- let the bagels prove for 35 minutes and then place them in the boiling water with the teaspoon of bicarb for 2 minutes (1 minute each side)
- Sprinkle with poppy seeds and place in the bagels onto a tray greased with oil and bake for 20-25 minutes at 230
Things to improve for next time:
- Weigh the dough out so the weight of each dough is the same
- Improve the shaping so the bagel is an equal width all the way round and so the hole remains open
- Linked to above point, when I shaped the bagel the dough twisted and teared slightly, in future make sure the dough is smooth will no tears and cracks.
Overall I was reasonably happy with my first attempt at bagels - they had a nice crispy and crunchy chew to them, as well as a nice colour:
You will surely enjoy here, there are lots of seasoned bakers here! A great community to share, ask and learn; we enjoy each other's baking adventures so keep your posts coming!
Thanks! I've already learned from just searching these forums - they've been so helpful so far.
- This was my 4th attempt at this bread this week. I can finally say I'm reasonably happy with this one.
- My 3 other attempts I think my problem was they were over-proofed and/or under-kneeded which led to a dense flat loaf with very little oven spring.
- I followed the same James Morton recipe with some changes: I autolysed the whole mixture for 40-50 minutes, my first rise was only 6 hours in the fridge and my proof was only 2 hours at room temperature.
- I'm proud of this one because my first real success with a "sourdough" style bread: there was also yeast added as well as my natural leven.
For Next Time...
- Try to score deeper and at 90 degrees!
- I can add a couple more hours onto the first rise and probably an other hour onto the final rise as the crumb was just a tad dense.