This is my baking blog now.
My first two batches of bagels were strictly OK but with this third batch I’m finally getting somewhere. I started with this recipe: http://camolove.com/recipes/baking/homemade-rye-bagels/ I then made these modifications:
*Doubled the recipe overall to make 12 bagels *Went with the honey over the agave syrup because we have a lot of it *Subbed 3c All-purpose flour for 3c White Whole Wheat flour and 1.5Tbps Gluten *Added 2 eggs *The eggs made the dough WAY too liquid (whoops) so I ended up adding an extra .5c WWW flour during the kneading (thanks to my partner for the assist there...) *Forgot the brown sugar for the water bath. Whoops *Recipe doesn’t recommend an egg wash for whatever fucking reason but I did one. How they expect the toppings to stick to a bagel that is only wet with water is beyond me. Standard 1tsp water, 1 egg. *Toppings: 3 plain, 3 coarse salt (Fucking OP as shit topping, badly needs a nerf) 3 poppy seed, 3 sesame seed (pretty good) Boiled for 1 minute, 20 seconds on both sides. Definitely not chewy enough, they need a longer bath next time. Baked for 27 minutes, they looked great on the first check.
Insights:
*Boil for longer *Probably don’t need both eggs AND gluten. Next time try eggs-only, and possibly more of them. *Whole wheat/rye is fucking tasty. Salt on top of that is broken. *I overshot the crumbly/springy balancing point this time, probably due to the gluten. Boiling for longer probably will help, too. *Next time make sure that extra flour AND extra water are on hand during the kneading phase. First time in a while I’ve overshot the liquid/solid balancing point rather than undershooting. *I still need a big cookie sheet...