There is a great tutorial for bagel making on another great vegan blog that I read, I Eat Food. I made bagels once before, and it was a complete failure, but when I saw the “I eat food” tutorial go up, I got excited. There were several things that interested me in the method. First, the bagels are shaped and then “retarded” in the fridge overnight, secondly baking soda is added to the water before boiling. Neither of these things were suggested in my original bagel recipe and those bagels were a mess. The verdict on the bagels I made using this method is that they are not quite as good as some bagels that I’ve had on Queens or Long Island, but way better than any bagel I’ve gotten in the Village or all of Boston.
I didn’t get any pictures from the ingredients or kneading process, so visit the other blog for that. I changed her recipe only slightly, I substituted in a cup of wheat flour in the “sponge” stage and again in the dough process. I also did not have any plastic wrap, so I used grocery store bags to protect the bagels from the fridge air. I put a layer of wax paper over them first to protect them from the plastic bags:
Here the bagels are unwrapped after their night in the fridge:
Next it was time for boiling:
And sprinkling with spices (to make everything bagels: sea salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, dill seeds, and caraway seeds)
And finished product cooling after being baked:
