Bagelz!

We've been making bagels a lot again lately - we made them two days in a row this past week. Nathan's sister Brooke has requested the recipe be put online...

The Bagels of Paris From Rustic European Breads

The recipe is for bread machines - if you don't have one, you can probably just make the dough using the ingredients as listed and following a bread recipe from another cookbook.

Dough:

• 4 tsp bread machine yeast
• 3 1/2 cups bread flour
• 3 tbps sugar
• 2 1/2 - 3 tsp kosher salt (2 1/2 tsp will allow a little sweeter taste to emerge, 3 tsp will be traditional)
• 1 1/3 cups of water (minus a few tbsp if you are at high altitude like us).

Whole grain variation:

Instead of using 3 1/2 cups of bread flour, you can do something along the lines of the following (I just used what I had lying around):

• 1 cup white flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 spelt flour
• 1/4 cup flax seed flour

Optional: substitue 1/4 cup of flour for 1/4 cup of wheat gluten - it will make the bagels rise better.

Boiling water: 2 tbsp malt syrup (I found mine at Wild Oats - most health food stores sell barley malt as an alternative to cane sugar.) 2 quarts water

Combine the dough ingredients in the bread machine pan and punch the buttons for the dough setting. We set ours on the timer so it wakes us up at 7 am so we can have hot bagels for breakfast.

The next morning: Bring the malt syrup and water to boil in a 4 quart pan. I don't know about pan sizes - I just use the large pan we use to make pasta in and fill it full of water.

Preheat the oven to 425, and lightly grease a heavy baking pan or two. Sprinkle them lightly with cornmeal.

Remove the dough from the bread machine, knead a few times lightly to deflate any air bubbles.

Pinch off or cut 8 equal pieces of dough and form them into balls. Flatten the balls slightly with your thumb, poke a hole in the middle. Pull and stretch the dough until it is roughly the size of a donut.

Adjust the heat under the boiling water so that the water is just at a low boil. Gently drop four of the bagels into the wateer and allow them to boil for 30 seconds. Using a skimmer, turn the bagels and boil for an additional 30 seconds. Remove them from the water and drain on clean towels. Repeat with the remaining four bagels.

Place the boiled, drained bagels on the baking sheet(s) and bake in the preheated oven for 11 minutes. Then quickly and carefully flip the bagels over, and bake for an additional 11 minutes. Whole wheat bagels may take up to four more minutes to bake.

After the 22 minutes the bagels should look lightly browned and shiny - if not cook them longer. Remove the bagels from the baking sheet to cool on a rack for at least 10 minutes. These bagels are best the day they are made, but I find they keep for a few days pretty well.