Alarming Bagels

I saved this recipe to enjoy on a weekend we the entire family was at home. This month has been quite busy so it went past the 15th. On Thursday I went to my local bagel store (CB for you locals) and asked if it was possible if I could buy some of their high gluten flour from them. I explained what I was doing and the owner was very excited of my upcoming journey and sold me 7 cups of flour for only $2.00! Sweet! My son is on a gluten free/casein free diet and as guilty as I feel twice a month baking these lovely formulas, I couldn't bear to purchase a flour called high gluten. (silly I know) I was also able to enjoy some malt powder from a fellow half-baked beauty - thank you friend! So on Friday I made my sponge and completed steps 1-8. Renee was right - much harder to knead. I decided to talk on the phone for those 10 minutes instead of staring at the clock. It went a little faster.




So the next morning, my sweet boy who is my early morning partner and I were downstairs before the rest of the family. I planned to surprise them all and have the bagels ready for when they woke up. I had forgotten that I was going to make some chocolate chip bagels, and I guess they should have been mixed into the dough at step 3? similar to the raisin instructions. So I improvised and stuck them in there right before boiling.

The boiling process was quite fun. I completed it for a minute on each side but next time I might go for 90 seconds to have a little more chewiness.

I had pre-heated the oven at 500 and these beauties were in the oven for about 3 minutes and then....the fire alarm went off. (There must have been something on the bottom of my oven to cause a little smoke for our over-active alarm) So much for my great plan of surprising everyone - SURPRISE! at 6:50AM. But after they wiped the sleepies from eyes and realized hot bagels were in there future, everyone was happy. We had sesame seeds, chocolate chip and cinnamon sugar for our toppings. Hubby said it smelled like a real NY bagel shop and everyone (except my little gluten free guy - he got a Trader Joe's GFCF english muffin) enjoyed these lovely beauties! Definitely we'll be making these again!