Half of a plain bagel with cream cheese, half eaten

Not the first bagels I’ve eaten, but the first ones I’ve ever made. Like most bread, there is a series of timed steps that each contribute to the yumminess. For this batch, I used Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe in The Bread Bible. I have some steps for you here in pictures. I skipped pics of the sponge and bulk rise parts though. Too bad, you could’ve seen the dough almost bust out of it’s container.

Shaping bagels is pretty easy. After you’ve separated the dough into pieces, you poke a finger in the center, pick it up, stretch until you can get both fingers in the hole (yeah, it’s pretty naughty) and either pull and rotate around until you’ve got a 2 1/2″ hole (it’ll snap back) or wind it around with your fingers as kind of spokes like Kevin did and it’ll go really fast. That last bit is hard to describe. Oh well, you’ll figure it out.

Bagels taking a boiling bath

You boil them up for about 2 minutes per side. Then let rest for a minute on a clean towel to drain before transferring to a baking sheet.

Boiled bagels ready for baking

Bagels baking in my crappy oven

Bagels just out of the oven

These are spongy and chewy crusted like bagels should be. We also made a few onion bagels. They were even more amazing. I was concerned because it looked like the onions were burninating while they were baking, but it all turned out fine.

Onion bagel

In addition to this being a VeganMofo post, I’m submitting it to Wild Yeast Blog’s weekly Yeastspotting feature. Every week Susan rounds up yummy baking posts from around the ‘net. Check it out.