Bagels

Everyone has their perfect bagel, unfortunately these aren’t them.  Don’t get me wrong, they are a great bagel.  They just aren’t perfect.  They do, however, probably come as close to the perfect bagel as you can make a home and outside of New York City.

This recipe comes from one of my newly favorite bread books, Artisan Breads at Home by the Culinary Institute of America.  This books is arranged a little oddly, but makes great bread.  And, as any good bread book should, includes measurements by weight and bakers percentage.  It’s big contribution is the addition of malt syrup to breads to give them a better rise and better flavor.

The key pieces to making good bagels at home are using malt syrup and a good quality high protein flour.  You want a flour with a higher protein content than normal bread flour.  I’ve chosen to use Sir Lancelot Flour from King Arthur Flour.

 

Here is the mise en place for the bagels.  As you can see there are only three ingredients, other than water and salt.

These bagels start with a sponge.  Sponges are just a type of quick preferment to give the bread a better flavor.  This sponge starts with water and malt syrup.

The sponge also has some flour and yeast.

Here is the sponge.  It sits out in a covered bowl for an hour.

Next up is the main dough.  Again, it starts with some water and malt syrup.

The finished sponge gets added to the water mixture.

The sponge and wet ingredients get all mixed together with the dough hook.

Then the remaining flour, yeast, and salt get mixed in.

Once the dough is mixed and the gluten has fully developed, it gets turned out onto the counter.  Since the flour has a higher protein content, it will actually take longer to fully develop the gluten.  The dough is also very stiff.  These two things together make it so that your stand mixer can overheat.  If it does, then you’ll need to revert to kneading by hand.

The dough should then be measured out into roughly 5 ounce pieces and shaped into an oblong.

After a quick rest on the counter, the dough is ready to be shaped into a bagel.  The first step was to flatten it out into a rectangle.

Then shape it into a long snake by constantly folding down in thirds.

One end of the dough can then be wet and attached to the other end to make a circle.  To fully seal the shape, it should be rolled around your fingers, gently pressing on the dough.

The bagels then need to retard in the refrigerator over night.

The next day, after the bagels have been removed and brought to room temperature, a large pot of water and malt syrup should be brought to a boil.

Each bagel should be boiled for 20 seconds, then placed on a baking sheet.  At this point various toppings can be added to the bagels.  I opted for plain and a few with salt.

The bagels then bake at 475 degrees Fahrenheit for about 14 minutes.

They come out nice and golden brown with a slightly blistered crust.

Pumpkin Bread

It’s fall now and nothing says fall to me like pumpkin bread.  Pumpkin bread is a type of quick bread.  While it’s called bread, it is really more of cake in the shape of a loaf of bread.  This recipe could also be used to make it in the shape of a normal cake and then iced.

This recipe is extremely easy to make and is very forgiving of mistakes.  You could use fresh pumpkin and make it a little more “home made” but would result in a much more involved recipe.

Here is the recipe that I use:

3 cups Granulated Sugar

1 cup Vegetable Oil

4 Eggs

15 oz Canned Pumpkin

3 1/2 cup All Purpose Flour

2 tsp Salt

2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Nutmeg

1 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Ground Allspice

2/3 cup Water

Here is the mise en place for the pumpkin bread.

First the sugar and oil get mixed together.

Here they are after being creamed together.

Next up is the eggs.  They get lightly beaten before being added.

This is the mixture after the eggs were added.

The pumpkin goes in and gets mixed well.

The dry ingredients all get measured out into a separate bowl and mixed together.

Then the dry ingredients get mixed into the pumpkin mixture in 3 batches, alternating with the water.  This alternating procedure lets you get all the flour mixed in without clumping or over mixing the batter.

The batter gets evenly divided into two loaf pans.  They get baked in a 350 degrees oven for 40-60 minutes.

When it is done the bread should have pulled a little away from the sides of the pan and a skewer should come out clean when inserted into the center of the loaf.

The loaves should be cooled for about 10 minutes in the pans before turning out and cooling the rest of the way on a wire rack.

Here’s the final loaf.

Portuguese Sweet Bread

This week I decided to make some Portuguese Sweet Bread.  It is sometimes called Hawaiian bread due to its popularity there.  The recipe for this once again came from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. 

This bread is somewhat rich from the butter and egg.  It is also a little citrusy.  The bread is good on its own, but makes for some outstanding French toast.

This is the mise en place for the sponge for the bread.

First, the dry ingredients go into a bowl and mixed.

The sponge gets water added and mixed together.

The sponge sits for an hour or two until its extremely bubbly and ready to collapse onto itself.

This is the mise en place for the dough, minus salt.

The butter, sugar, and dry milk are measured and ready for mixing.

Then they all get creamed together.

The eggs and extracts get mixed into the butter until smooth.

Then the bread flour gets kneaded in for about 10 minutes.  It should pass the windowpane test, when the dough can be spread out so that you can see through it.

The dough shaped into a ball and set in an oiled bowl.  It then has to ferment for about two hours.

At that point, the dough get “punched down” and reshaped into a ball.  It then gets placed into an oiled pie tin and left on the counter to proof for another two hours.

Here is a shot of the dough, with the skin pulled tight.

After the proofing period, it gets brushed with egg wash and baking in the oven for 50 minutes.

After baking, the crust gets a deep mahogany brown.

And here is a final shot of the bread in slices.

Let Them Eat Cake - Brioche

“Let them eat cake”, the phrase that was so famously said by Marie Antoinette.  Except, she didn’t.  The phrase was mistranslated and should have read “let them eat brioche.”  Of course, contemporary thinking suggests that she didn’t even utter this either.

Brioche is a rich buttery and egg laden bread.  The crust of the bread is very flaky, while the crumb of the bread is extremely tender.

Again, for this recipe I’ve turned to my favorite bread book: The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.  In the book he presents three different recipes with varying amounts of butter.  I’ve always chosen to make the Rich Man’s Brioche, because as I see it, if you are going to make Brioche, you should make it the richest possible.  To that end, I’ve made some substitutions to the recipe presented in the book.  I’ve replaced the normal butter with my favorite butter: Plugra.  Also, I’ve replaced the whole milk with buttermilk.  The recipe provided in the book is excellent, but I think these two substitutions provide a better richer taste.

Once again, here is my mise en place. 

Getting ready to make the sponge, flour and yeast get mixed.

I heated the buttermilk in the microwave, but turns out I got it too hot, so here it is in a water bath, cooling down.  It needs to be between 90 & 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The sponge gets mixed and then set aside for 20 minutes, as the other ingredients get prepared.

Here’s the remaining dry ingredients: flour, sugar, and some salt.

Five eggs get cracked and then lightly whisked.

Here’s the pound of Plugra cut into manageable slices.

After 20 minute, the sponge is bubbly and ready for mixing.

The eggs get mixed into the sponge.

Then the remaining dry ingredients are mixed in.  This gets mixed for a few minutes to help the gluten develop before the butter gets mixed in.

Here’s the first round of butter getting mixed in.  The butter needs to be mixed in bit by bit.

Here’s the dough after all the butter has been mixed in.

The dough gets placed on a oiled parchment paper, then covered with plastic wrap and placed in the refrigerator overnight.

Here’s a close up view of what the dough should look like before going into the fridge.

And here we’ve skipped a few steps.  The dough came out of the fridge, was shaped into a ball, then into a brioche à tête.  The recipe makes two loaves, but since I only have one brioche pan, the other loaf got shaped into a normal bread loaf.

Here’s the brioche after baking.  The crust should be shinier and flakier but I forgot to give the loaf an egg wash prior to baking.

Here’s a close up of the crust of the finished brioche.