If At First You Don't Succeed

Last Wednesday I made bagels using regular bread flour. I could not get it to a high enough temperature when kneading it for over ten minutes but my arms and hands were exhausted so I just stopped and let Wesley take over. Believe it or not his shirt already looked like that. They did PaperMache at school. I ended up with 26 mini-bagels. I don't have a food scale so I just made small rolls and then shaped them into bagels. The main problem occurred on Friday morning when I baked them. I am embarrassed to admit this, but I had something in the oven that spilled at some point and I never cleaned it up. It wasn't a problem at 350 degrees but at 500 degrees, it started smelling really burnt. Chris said the bagels tasted like campfire but they were actually worse than that and I trashed them.

On Saturday, I followed Kendra's lead and went to buy high gluten flour. One of the employees was nice enough to help me (while Lydia slept in my arms) but he lectured me on how bad gluten is for everyone. I must say that I didn't agree with the majority of what he said and I was annoyed by his comments. When I asked for malt powder he told me that was terrible for people. I don't plan to go back to that store.

I needed another item to help me with kneading the stiff flour. I stood on an Ikea step. The extra five inches really helped. I was able to get the flour to right temperature in ten minutes and it passed the windowpane test.
I divided the dough into approximately equal quarters and then made three rolls out of each section and they looked pretty even. After they rested for approximately 20 minutes, I shaped the bagels by poking a hole in the rolls. One bagel floated after sitting at room temperature for 20 minutes. I put them in the fridge overnight and boiled them this morning. My oven wasn't as hot as it should have been so I baked them for a total of 14 minutes. I had some plain bagels and some with sesame seeds and some with Garlic Garlic.

The kids and I ate them with butter this morning. They were delicious.

For lunch, we had bagel sandwiches. We used a counter top grill to make them panini style. I think I am going to order some high gluten flour and malt powder (instead of using Carnation Malted Milk) and make bagels at home instead of buying them. It would be cheaper.

So, if at first you don't succeed, try again!