Bagels!

This bagel recipe has been languishing in my drafts folder since 2011!  Crazy, I know.  I did all the work, uploaded all the photos, but then never published the recipe!  At this point, I'm not even sure where it came from.  So, without further ado, vintage bagels.

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Hey guys.

I know I've been absent. I haven't been doing much heavy lifting in the kitchen lately, and blogging on my crappy internet connection is torturously slow and depressing. But I got a hankering to bake today, and I decided to try my hand at bagels. They are fresh from the oven at this very second, and boy, does my house smell terrific.

You will need:
One and two-thirds cups of warm water
One teaspoon active dry yeast
Two tablespoons sugar
Four and a half cups of bread flour
One and a half teaspoons salt
Two teaspoons olive oil

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or just a large mixing bowl, if you want to do this by hand), combine the yeast, sugar, and warm water.  The water should be just warm, NOT hot.  If it's too hot, it will kill the yeast and your dough won't rise.  Let the yeast sit and dissolve and become happy, about five minutes, then give it a quick stir just to make sure it's not lumpy.

Fix your mixer with the dough hook, add the flour, and stir until the flour is lumpy and wet, then add the salt and olive oil.  Mix/knead the dough until it becomes smooth, but sticky to the touch. 

Remove the dough, and put it in a lightly greased bowl. Cover with a towel or plastic wrap, and put it in a warm spot to rise, until doubled in size.  (This should take an hour or two, depending on how happy the yeast is, how warm the room is, and whether or not Jupiter is in the seventh house.)

Come back, punch down the dough, and turn it out onto a floured surface.  Form it into a ball.



Divide the dough in half, then in half again, and so forth, until you have 6-12 equal pieces that are smaller than a tennis ball, but larger than a golf ball.



Roll each piece of dough into a long snake, somewhere around 10 inches.



Then--you guessed it!--form each snake into a circle.  As you can see in the picture, I was super paranoid about making sure my bagels had a definite hole in the center, so my circles are quite wide.





Set your bagels on paper towels, cover them, and walk away.  These babies need to rise again, at least two hours.  Make sure they're warm!



Once the bagels have satisfactorily risen (see my enormo holes? I was so paranoid!), put a large pot of water on to boil.  Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.



Boil the bagels, one at a time, for 30 seconds per side, then remove with a slotted spoon to paper towels.  Once they've all been boiled and drained, put them on a baking sheet and stick them in the oven! (If you want to add toppings, like poppyseeds or cheese, this is where you should carefully brush your bagels with an egg wash or olive oil and add them.)



Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. (Every oven is different, so adjust accordingly! Start checking at 8 minutes, and monitor from there.)

Enjoy!

Takes about an hour of hands-on time, plus 2-4 hours of rise time.
Makes 6-12.
Difficulty: 4.