How To Make A Bagel
Call
them noble rolls or commoner's delights, bagels are not very easy to make.
In fact, bagel making is an art. It not only requires high-quality ingredients
- flour, yeast, malt and water -- but making a good-tasting bagel, takes
a baker with years of experience and excellent culinary skills.
For hundreds of years, bagels have been hand made. Today, most bagel shops are mechanized, and only a few places have held to the tradition of hand kneading.
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| To see bagel making in action, click here. |
The dough-making process
is similar to other bread-making.
Many shops use from 200 to 500 pounds of high-gluten flour in one batch.
For each pound of flour they add about half a pound of water. They also
add yeast to make the dough rise; malt syrup for sweetness and full flavor;
salt for taste. Other ingredients can be added for flavor, including raisins,
onions, eggs, poppy or sesame seeds.
The ingredients are mixed slowly and gently in mechanical mixers. Dough is then transferred to a divider, where it is cut into 3-ounce balls. The pieces are then pulled into another machine, where the dough is wrapped around a metal bar and formed into its well-recognized bagel shape.
The popular H&H Bagels in Manhattan can make more than 2,500 bagels an hour.
Once formed, bagels are transferred onto metal racks and moved to a warm place, so the dough can rise slowly. When they have doubled in size, the bagels are dropped into a huge vat of boiling water for a few minutes. This quick boiling gives them their shiny crust. And finally, they are placed on canvas-covered wooden trays and are baked on revolving trays until done.
Bagel shops adapt this basic plan to make their own secret recipes. They use different amounts of water, flour, salt and yeast, add different malt syrups, and let their raw bagels proof (letting the dough rise) for different lengths of time. And baking at different temperatures also can change the final product.
"Our bagels stay
there until they are just right," David Spier of H&H
Bagels says.
"We use only the best ingredients. Our dough is checked by hand,
by a professional baker."
Holey
Bagel: From New York With Love
Born to Bake Bagels
History of the Bagel: The Hole Story
How to Make a Bagel
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Basic Bagel Recipe Most
professional bagel bakers won't share their secret recipes. Here's
a basic recipe to try at home.
Dissolve yeast in warm water. Add 1 tsp. sugar, oil and salt. Stir in four cups of the flour. Add flour a little at a time until the dough is too stiff to beat. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, adding enough flour so that it is elastic but not too stiff. Let dough rise in a greased bowl in a warm place until doubled in bulk. Punch
down, knead for a few minutes and divide into 18 pieces. Roll
each one into a rope 1 inch in diameter and 6 inches long. Form
rings, pinching the ends together firmly.
Preheat
oven to 375º. Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil, adding
2 Tbsp. of brown sugar. Drop 4 or 5 bagels at a time into the
boiling water. Turn them with a long-handled spoon after they
rise to the surface and boil for an additional minute.
Lift them out with a slotted spoon and let them rest on a greased cookie sheet while boiling the next 4 or 5 in the same manner. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown. Makes 18 bagels |