I made that!

When I see a sticky white bundle of cloth dangling in my kitchen, I know good things are coming.

As I have mentioned a few times, I do love a good cheese making session. Not that there’s much work on my end, I just like seeing that slow curding and draining process going on. Yesterday I made a yummy spreadable cream cheese, because, well, I’ve got some spreading to do. Me and Pantea are throwing a brunch party today, and while she will dominated with her delicious shirred eggs and veggies dish, my contribution will be loads of carbs and fat. Also known as bagels and cream cheese.

I’ve been wanting to make bagels forever, but it just seemed like one of those all day long projects, and then we would have stacks of bagels lying around. Since I’m way to obsessed with working my way through my vegetable box every week, AND I’ve been trying to ease John out of his carb addiction, it just seemed wrong. So I’ve been waiting, patiently, biding my time before pouncing on a good brunch invitation with my (hopefully) beautiful bagels.

So…we begin. bagels. I’m using the recipe from Peter Reinhardt’s “Bread Baker’s Apprentice”, Mostly because I think it’s a rad book, but also because it’s the only breadbaking book I own. I started with a sticky sponge (in breadspeak, a sponge is like a mini batch of your dough that you let rise for a bit before adding the rest or your ingredients, to add flavor) that I let hang out until it was all bubbly and magical cauldron looking.

Then I added the rest of the ingredients: flour, yeast, salt and malt syrup. Bagels are meant to be quite chewy, which requires a lot of kneading to build up all that gluten. And because they’re going to be boiled, bagels begin as a super stiff dough, which is easier to knead by hand, and can be a bit of work on your kitchen aid mixer. I started the kneading in my machine, but chickened out after 5 minutes or so when it started grunting. I finished the kneading by hand, basically kneading until I could stretch a piece of it out with my hands without it tearing.

Then I portioned it into future bagel sized chunks.

And poked little holes in them! Let us not discuss my shaping skills, they are…er…in progress.

Then I let my little guys rest for a bit, and rise until they could float in water. Once they were nice and floaty, they were ready to spend the night in the fridge.

I got up this morning pumped for my little bagel adventure! I cranked up the oven and brought a pot of water to boil. I boiled my bagels in batches for 1 minute on each side and then put them back on the sheet pan. I sprinkled them with sesame seeds, poppy seeds and sea salt while boiling the rest.

Then I baked them!

So Cute and most definitely brunch-worthy!