I made my first bagels today!
Homemade whole wheat everything bagel
Homemade whole wheat cinnamon crunch bagel
Inspiration
I was inspired by this visual recipe I found on Pinterest. It links to another page with the actual recipe. I had one tab open in my browser for each while I was making it.
Of course I was also inspired by all the bagels I've had before, and especially by Panera, a restaurant my husband and I both love.
My inspiration for starting a food blog comes from my friend Nicole of Breaking Even Communications and AnchorSpace. She's been bugging me to do it for a while, so thanks Nicole! This is for you. :)
Reason/Backstory
Do you need a reason for bagels? How about bagel Friday?
OK, so I've had it on my to do list for weeks to make bagels for my husband, whose work team does bagel Friday every week. Today was the day I was finally ready to do it, and he was ready to walk out the door to go to work before the dough had even risen. What? He's going to spend gas and time driving to work to have someone else's bagels when he could work from home and eat the bagels I'm making special for him? I don't think so. In the end, my methods weren't perfect, but by God's grace I stayed calm and he decided to stay home. I was thankful to be able to share and enjoy bagel Friday with him.
Time Notes
I got up around 6:10 a.m. and came straight down to the kitchen to make them. We were eating them by about 9:30 a.m., just to give you an idea how long it can take.
Waking up my laptop, trying not to get distracted by e-mail & Facebook, finding where I had pinned the recipes, getting out the ingredients, skimming the recipes, etc. were all part of the process. Also, my oven refused to go above 400 degrees, so it took 5 minutes longer to bake them.
Toppings
The recipes I used did not have any details about toppings, so I will include mine here:
Cinnamon Crunch
3 Tbsp demerara sugar + 3/4 tsp cinnamon
Everything Mix
2 tsp each: sesame seeds, poppy seeds, dried onion, granulated garlic
pinch of salt (optional)
Alilia's Customization & Notes
I used organic whole wheat pastry flour + 2 Tbsp gluten flour where the recipe called for bread flour or high gluten flour.
For the vegan eggwash, I used Ener-G egg replacer equivalent of one egg. Next time, I plan to make it thinner (more water, less egg replacer) because as you can see in the bottom of the 2nd picture, it leaves a white spot where there's no topping.
