cooking and baking
Dec. 13th, 2015 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI made some bagels this weekend, using the recipe from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice instead of the one I'd used before from the King Arthur Flour website. I like the results much better with Reinhart's recipe: the dough is easier to work with and the overnight rise makes the bagels more flavorful.
Bagels (makes 12 large)
Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant yeast
18 oz (510 g) bread flour (aka strong flour--use the highest gluten flour you can find)
20 oz (567 g) water at room temperature
Dough:
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
17 oz (482 g) bread flour
.7 oz (20 g) salt
2 teaspoons malt powder or 1 tablespoon malt syrup, honey, maple syrup or brown sugar
Sponge: Mix flour and yeast, add water, stir until a sticky dough forms. Cover with plastic and let sit about 2 hours. Should become bubbly, nearly double in size, and should collapse when you tap the bowl on the counter.
Dough: Add the additional yeast to the sponge and stir. Then add most of the flour (reserve about 3/4 cup), plus the salt and malt powder or whatever you're using. Stir until it forms a ball, then add the rest of the flour to stiffen.
Knead at least 10 mins. Dough should be firm and stiff but pliable. When ready it should pass the windowpane test (i.e. you should be able to stretch a small piece of dough until it's thin enough be to translucent without breaking it) and the dough temperature should be 77-81 F or 25-27 C.
Divide the dough into 12 equal portions, 4.5 ounces (127 g) apiece, for standard size bagels. Cover with plastic or a damp towel and let rest 20 minutes.
Shape dough into bagels, either by poking a hole in each dough ball with your finger or by shaping the dough into an 8-inch snake, wrapping the snake around your hand with the ends overlapping, and rolling the overlapped ends gently on the counter (still wrapped around your hand) until they're joined. [I used the latter method and it's very easy but I couldn't get even bagels that way.]
Line 2 sheet pans with parchment and lightly spray with oil. Place bagels on pans, mist lightly with spray oil, cover with plastic wrap and let rest 20 mins.
Bagels are ready to be retarded in the refrigerator if a bagel floats within 10 seconds when dropped into a bowl of cool water. If it doesn't float, let them rest some more.
When bagels are ready, refrigerate, well covered with plastic wrap, overnight or up to 2 days.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 500F/260C and bring a big pan of water to the boil. [Reinhart says to add a pinch of baking soda to the water to make the crust chewier; you'll get better browning if you also add a couple of teaspoons of malt syrup.]
Remove the bagels and drop them straight from the refrigerator into the boiling water. Boil bagels for between 30 seconds and 1 minute per side, then remove to parchment-lined pan and place in oven. Bake for 5-8 minutes at 500/260, then rotate pans, lower heat to 450/230 and bake another 5-8 minutes, until bagels are browned. [Reinhart says you can boil them for up to 2 minutes per side for a chewier crust, but a 2 minute boil gave me flat bagels because they over-rose in the water and then collapsed. I had better results with 1 minute per side, and I've seen 30 seconds recommended for the best rise and shape. Also, Reinhart says to bake them for 10 minutes altogether, but that was not nearly long enough in my oven. I needed 16 minutes total and I only dropped the oven temp to 475/245.)
Remove from oven and cool on a rack.
These make flavorful, moderately chewy bagels with a crisp/chewy crust. The higher-gluten your flour and the stiffer your dough, the chewier your bagels will be. Also, note that the yeast amounts are for baking at sea level altitude. I used less--a very scant teaspoon initially and then a very scant 1/2 t--plus my room temperature is quite cold, and it was still a little too much yeast. Next time I'll try 3/4 t and 1/4 t.
Besides bagels, I also baked an onion focaccia using some dough I had in the freezer. Nice, but the onion turned a bit pinkish.
I also improvised a salady thing with bulgur wheat, chickpeas, olives, chopped preserved lemon, pomegranate seeds, olive oil, lemon juice, and a bit of dried mint. It turned out blander than you'd expect given all the stuff in it, but it used up some things that needed using, notably the pomegranate, and it'll make passable lunches for the week.
My Christmas cooking plans have been drastically scaled back, as they tend to be. I'm thinking I won't cook at all, just have treats--bread, crackers, a couple of decent cheeses, some smoked salmon, olives, etc. The weekend before Christmas I might make a soup or a lasagne or something and freeze it in case I decide I really must have a proper meal.
At some point before Christmas I'll bake some chocolate-chestnut bars (recipe from one of the Ottolenghi cookbooks). I'll also have to make something to bring to work, because we usually have a Christmas Eve potluck. Maybe bread again (a different kind this time) since it was such a hit before, and maybe a cheesecake.
I decided not to make a fruitcake this year, since while I like fruitcake, I'm not sure I like it enough.
After Christmas, when work is calmer and the long cold months stretch bleakly before me, that's when I'll cook a ham (hopefully on sale cheap post-Christmas), and maybe bake the chocolate mandarin truffle cake I've been ogling for months in Marcel Desaulniers' I'm Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas. This involves two layers of flourless chocolate cake, filled and frosted with rich orange buttercream; in other words, a chocolate orange taken to the height of smooth creamy perfection. Oh, and I also want to bake Ottolenghi's spice cookies at some point, and this cranberry-pomegranate bundt cake I found online, and some sweet-potato cinnamon rolls . . .
So many things I could bake, so little time. And the cake-eating capacity of any human, even me, is tragically limited.
Bagels (makes 12 large)
Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant yeast
18 oz (510 g) bread flour (aka strong flour--use the highest gluten flour you can find)
20 oz (567 g) water at room temperature
Dough:
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
17 oz (482 g) bread flour
.7 oz (20 g) salt
2 teaspoons malt powder or 1 tablespoon malt syrup, honey, maple syrup or brown sugar
Sponge: Mix flour and yeast, add water, stir until a sticky dough forms. Cover with plastic and let sit about 2 hours. Should become bubbly, nearly double in size, and should collapse when you tap the bowl on the counter.
Dough: Add the additional yeast to the sponge and stir. Then add most of the flour (reserve about 3/4 cup), plus the salt and malt powder or whatever you're using. Stir until it forms a ball, then add the rest of the flour to stiffen.
Knead at least 10 mins. Dough should be firm and stiff but pliable. When ready it should pass the windowpane test (i.e. you should be able to stretch a small piece of dough until it's thin enough be to translucent without breaking it) and the dough temperature should be 77-81 F or 25-27 C.
Divide the dough into 12 equal portions, 4.5 ounces (127 g) apiece, for standard size bagels. Cover with plastic or a damp towel and let rest 20 minutes.
Shape dough into bagels, either by poking a hole in each dough ball with your finger or by shaping the dough into an 8-inch snake, wrapping the snake around your hand with the ends overlapping, and rolling the overlapped ends gently on the counter (still wrapped around your hand) until they're joined. [I used the latter method and it's very easy but I couldn't get even bagels that way.]
Line 2 sheet pans with parchment and lightly spray with oil. Place bagels on pans, mist lightly with spray oil, cover with plastic wrap and let rest 20 mins.
Bagels are ready to be retarded in the refrigerator if a bagel floats within 10 seconds when dropped into a bowl of cool water. If it doesn't float, let them rest some more.
When bagels are ready, refrigerate, well covered with plastic wrap, overnight or up to 2 days.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 500F/260C and bring a big pan of water to the boil. [Reinhart says to add a pinch of baking soda to the water to make the crust chewier; you'll get better browning if you also add a couple of teaspoons of malt syrup.]
Remove the bagels and drop them straight from the refrigerator into the boiling water. Boil bagels for between 30 seconds and 1 minute per side, then remove to parchment-lined pan and place in oven. Bake for 5-8 minutes at 500/260, then rotate pans, lower heat to 450/230 and bake another 5-8 minutes, until bagels are browned. [Reinhart says you can boil them for up to 2 minutes per side for a chewier crust, but a 2 minute boil gave me flat bagels because they over-rose in the water and then collapsed. I had better results with 1 minute per side, and I've seen 30 seconds recommended for the best rise and shape. Also, Reinhart says to bake them for 10 minutes altogether, but that was not nearly long enough in my oven. I needed 16 minutes total and I only dropped the oven temp to 475/245.)
Remove from oven and cool on a rack.
These make flavorful, moderately chewy bagels with a crisp/chewy crust. The higher-gluten your flour and the stiffer your dough, the chewier your bagels will be. Also, note that the yeast amounts are for baking at sea level altitude. I used less--a very scant teaspoon initially and then a very scant 1/2 t--plus my room temperature is quite cold, and it was still a little too much yeast. Next time I'll try 3/4 t and 1/4 t.
Besides bagels, I also baked an onion focaccia using some dough I had in the freezer. Nice, but the onion turned a bit pinkish.
I also improvised a salady thing with bulgur wheat, chickpeas, olives, chopped preserved lemon, pomegranate seeds, olive oil, lemon juice, and a bit of dried mint. It turned out blander than you'd expect given all the stuff in it, but it used up some things that needed using, notably the pomegranate, and it'll make passable lunches for the week.
My Christmas cooking plans have been drastically scaled back, as they tend to be. I'm thinking I won't cook at all, just have treats--bread, crackers, a couple of decent cheeses, some smoked salmon, olives, etc. The weekend before Christmas I might make a soup or a lasagne or something and freeze it in case I decide I really must have a proper meal.
At some point before Christmas I'll bake some chocolate-chestnut bars (recipe from one of the Ottolenghi cookbooks). I'll also have to make something to bring to work, because we usually have a Christmas Eve potluck. Maybe bread again (a different kind this time) since it was such a hit before, and maybe a cheesecake.
I decided not to make a fruitcake this year, since while I like fruitcake, I'm not sure I like it enough.
After Christmas, when work is calmer and the long cold months stretch bleakly before me, that's when I'll cook a ham (hopefully on sale cheap post-Christmas), and maybe bake the chocolate mandarin truffle cake I've been ogling for months in Marcel Desaulniers' I'm Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas. This involves two layers of flourless chocolate cake, filled and frosted with rich orange buttercream; in other words, a chocolate orange taken to the height of smooth creamy perfection. Oh, and I also want to bake Ottolenghi's spice cookies at some point, and this cranberry-pomegranate bundt cake I found online, and some sweet-potato cinnamon rolls . . .
So many things I could bake, so little time. And the cake-eating capacity of any human, even me, is tragically limited.
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Date: 2015-12-15 11:31 am (UTC)I really, really want a creme brulee torch!! Fun with fire!!