Sesame Bagels

Baked these bagels some time back. I actually only got to know about bagels after I starting baking. Baking has widen my knowledge on the different types of bakery and pastries all over the world. For some history on bagels, you may refer to here.

My first bagel was at starbucks. It was a rather plain kind of bread, best toasted with jams. Since I like toast, and it's a healthy bread, I find it worthwhile to give it a try! Yeap, I'm keen to try more kinds of bread. It's always nice to make your own breakfast from scratch. :)

Making of bagels involves a different step. The dough, after the second proofing, is boiled in the water before sending to the oven for baking. As such, you gotto be very careful not to deflate the nicely proofen dough. I did exactly just that. So, you can see that my bagel (first photo) is badly wrinkled. :( I guess you need to be gentle as well as skilful in handling the proofed dough. Out of the six bagels I shaped, three of them were destroyed by me! Thus for the remaining ones, I decided not to boil them, but just bake them as proofed in the oven.

Hehe...see below...at least it looked better right??
The interior was moderately dense and chewy, with a crispy exterior. The one which had been boiled was more chewy but too dense as they had been deflated. Overall, I found it ok, but definitely not as tasty as those sweet buns we have. :)

If you are interested, you may give it a try. :)

Ingredients:

• 250 g bread flour
• 10 g caster sugar
• 1 tap salt
• 2.5 g instant yeast
• 190 g water

Water for boiling

• 25 g caster sugar
• 500 g water

Method:

1. Lined a greased tray with parchment paper.
2. Mix all ingredients together to form a dough. (Separate the salt from the yeast)
3. Knead the dough until it pulls away from the sides of the bowl; becomes smooth, shiny and elastic (You may use a mixer or a bread machine to knead the dough).
4. Form dough into a loose round ball and let it proof until bouble in size, about 50 minutes.
5. Punch out the gas, and divide into 6 portions of about 60-80g each.
6. Form each portion into round ball and let it rest for 10 minutes.
7. Flatten the dough, roll into a long strip (like a rope), and seal the ends to form a ring, with a hole at the centre (make sure the hole is big enough to allow room for it to expand during proofing).
8. Repeat the same for all the remaining portions. Let proof for another 30 minutes.
9. Boil the water with sugar; lower the proofed dough into the boiling water, and simmer for 1 minute on each side. Transfer onto the prepared tray.
10. Brush bagels with egg wash and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
11. Bake the boiled bagels in a preheated oven at 170C for about 20 minutes.

Recipe Source: 面包，吐司，饼干 by 杜丽娟，李湘庭