Bread Bakers Apprentice - Bagels

(or how I almost killed a KitchenAid stand mixer)

Have you ever had one of those moments where you're in the middle of something, and you suddenly think you've made a critical and expensive mistake? That was about how I felt when I heard grinding coming from our big KitchenAid mixer as I started mixing the dough for the bagels. Then the paddle stopped moving temporarily, and I started seeing little bits of smoke coming up.

After a brief moment of panic, I started hand-kneading the dough, and boy that was challenging.

Some baked bagels on top,
and some unboiled dough below

Some days (well, okay, most days) I find myself disliking our side-by-side fridge/freezer unit. This was one of those days. Looking through the recipe, it says to let the bagel shapes sit in the fridge overnight. Well, with our side-by-side, there just isn't room for me to store two full baking sheets overnight. And that night, the garage was going to be too cold to use as a backup fridge. So, this only left the option of doing it all in one day.

This involved making the dough, forming it into balls, making those into bagels, using the float test (they passed with flying colors... which it turns out is bad in a different way), then boiling them, and then finally baking them. The dough had to rise after each step, so doing this all in one day is a long process.

So, this was almost a very expensive recipe, although, I did learn a couple of very useful things...

1. Our KitchenAid mixer does have limits, and a heavy bagel dough brings those limits a lot closer
2. Doing a half load of recipe in future is a good idea
3. We both agreed that the recipe could have used more cinnamon
4. I need to remember to mix in the additions during the mixing phase, not near the end of the (hand-) kneading
5. I can actually hand-knead a heavy dough if necessary

In the end, was it worth it? Yes, the bagels are tasty, and it was interesting to see how much effort goes into making a bagel. Kettleman's Bagels, and Great Canadian Bagel Co don't have to be worried about me though... lots more effort than I want to put into things on a regular basis, baking a loaf or two of regular potato bread is much more my speed.

Another week down on the BBA challenge, and another successful recipe. Next up is Brioche, then Casatiello. I may not do the brioche next week since we will have company, but I'm sure there will be something baking.