Ring in the New Year with bagels!

Happy New Year! When I look back on 2009, I think of it as the year of bread baking.

Bagels. One of my favorite baked items, I remember voraciously eating garlic and salt bagels after ballet class when I was younger. Unfortunately, it is certainly a baked good that is never executed well in California. I don't know if it is the lack of Jews or if they simply don't realize what a bagel should taste like, but I have had a real craving for bagels since I moved to San Diego, and until recently this craving has been impossible to sate. The ubiquitous, fluffy Einstein bagels at the breakfast vendor shows are more like pieces of round bread than a real bagel. A real bagel is chewy and dense, and should fill your stomach and be super delicious.

So I began a quest for THE bagel recipe, one I can make at home that will quell my intense desires, rather than making me curse leaving the East Coast, like the "bagels" they have out here do. I have tried this one from allrecipes (Bagels II) which has been solid on two occasions, though the scientist (and baker) in me balks at having to measure ingredients by volume?? How unpredictable. How barbaric.

So for New Year's Day, I tried the recipe in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice, because I could prepare it the night before, party it up and let them retard in the fridge, and simply boil and bake them the next day through my hangover (which, as expected, was killer. A truly spectacular human being invented powdered Gatorade).

These bagels were very easy to shape (a little too easy?) and I thought it would be a glorious New Year's Day. However, when I boiled them they sort of deflated, and rather than developing the nice brown chewy crust and mounded bagel shape I have come to expect from the allrecipes formula, I got these deflated pale toroid discs. Also, the baking time in the book is about half of what I think is required to cook a full size bagel in the oven.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. I believe what happened is the fridge became too warm due to the frequent removal of champagne, and the bagels over-proofed, leading to collapse upon boiling. The interior of the bagel was also too light in texture, and not chewy enough. I don't know how much of this was temperature, and how much was the formula. I mean, don't get me wrong, I still ATE three of them that day, but I knew it wasn't my best showing.

Everything bagels and poppyseed bagels, the food of the gods. Only the bagel closest in the picture looks as a bagel should. But fear not, there will be a bagel redux with my tried and true recipe coming soon, since I promised Natalie some cinnamon raisin. Maybe I'll be good enough to weigh out and write up the formula this time...