BagelsEquipment:
- A HUGE bowl
- A STRONG wooden spoon
- A 1-cup dry measure
- A 1-cup liquid measure
- at least 3 cookie sheets
- A 2-quart sauce pan
- A slotted spoon
- A metal spatula
- A large, clean counter.
- A basting brush
- An oven and a stove.
Ingredients:
- At least a 5lb sack of flour
- Some eggs.
- Some oil
- Some non-stick (I just use crisco)
- some salt
- Water
- Yeast, one package (about a teaspoon)
- Sugar or honey
Directions: Put 3 cups of warm water in the bowl, with about 1/4 cup
sugar or honey. Mix well, add a package of yeast. Mix in a
cup of flour. Let rise 1/2 hour
Dump in about 6 cups of flour, and as many eggs as you want,
and some salt (not too much). Mix like crazy, adding more
flour a bit at a time until you cannot work the spoon anymore.
Dump on a well floured counter. Clean the bowl and oil it.
Now kneed the dough until it doesn't want any more flour.
Could take 10 minutes. Put back in the oiled bowl.
Clean your counter again, and flour well. You are going to
spread bagels all over it. Grease the cookie sheets. Put a
quart of water in the sauce pan and bring to gentle boil.
Meanwhile dump out the dough, kneed until elastic, then cut
in half. Cut each half in half. Cut each quarter in half.
Cut each eighth in half. Cut each 16th in half. If the
pieces you have now are bigger than a lemon, cut in half
again. Each piece will become a bagel.
Roll each piece out to a snake - a long thin cylinder. Loop
around your fingers and roll the ends together making a
donut. Don't fret about wimpy looking rings - they will
rise! Put down on a floured surface to rise. By the time
you finish rolling them all, they will be ready to boil.
Heat oven to 400. Boil each bagel on each side about 30
seconds. I usually do 2 at once, one 30 seconds before the
next so that I have a continuous flow of bagels through the
boiling water. Put boiled bagels on the sheets.
When you have one sheet covered with bagels, stop the
boiling. Mix eggwash: one egg and a bit of milk. Brush egg
wash on top of bagels, sprinkle on sesame seeds, or poppy
seeds, or your favorite. Or leave blank. Pop cookie sheet in
oven for 20 minutes. Check the last 3 minutes to prevent
burning. Have the next batch ready by the time the first
batch comes out.
Remove from cookie sheet (may need metal spatula) and let
cool on cake rack. Clean cookie sheet for re-use. Eggwash
is hard to remove. Eat with butter or cream cheese or
anything. Clean up your mess.
NOTES: You can try other ingredients if you wish - rye flower or
whole wheat, add seeds to the dough, add raisins, cranberries
or dried fruit, or nuts. Try different amounts of eggs. Try
molasses for sweetener. Try other shapes than donuts.
The same recipe is good for traditional Challah bread. You
just braid 4 very big snakes of dough and bake on a cookie
sheet like the bagels - no boiling necessary. A Challah loaf
takes only a quarter the dough of a batch of bagels, so I
usually make a loaf and 3/4ths the usual number of bagels,
all at once.
Freeze the bagels you will not eat today. Give them to
friends. They make great drop-off Christmas gifts! Great to
bring to parties (with creamcheese, too). Slice thin and
toast. Dip bagel chunks in cheese fondue.