Bagels

Starter

• 241 g bread flour
• 227 mL water (94.2% hydration)
• a pinch of instant yeast

Dough

• All of the starter
• 298 g bread flour
• 1½ tsp instant yeast
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp malted milk powder
• 113 mL water (63.1% hydration)

Optional ingredients

• 1 cup fruits or nuts (optional)
• 4 egg yolks (and only add 57 mL water to the dough because each yolk has about 14 mL water)

Water Bath

• 8 cups water
• 2 tbsp malted milk powder
• 1 tbsp white sugar

Recipe

1. Prepare the starter in a stand mixer bowl, then cover and let grow overnight at room temperature.

2. Combine all the dough ingredients except the salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Cover and let rest for 20-30 min to autolyse.

3. Work the salt into the dough, then knead for 10 min. Expect the dough to be firm enough to hold its shape when the mixer is stopped. It should also pass the "windowpane" test.

4. Work in any fruits or nuts you want. Let dried fruits rehydrate in warm water for 5 min so they won't take moisture out of the dough.

5. Let the dough rise in a covered, lightly greased bowl for 60-90 minutes.
   The dough should be noticeably puffy, but not necessarily doubled in size.

6. Punch the dough down, transfer it to a very lightly floured surface, divide it into 8 ≈110 g pieces, shape each piece into a smooth ball, and place them on a greased baking sheet.

7. Cover the balls and let them rise for 30 min. Expect them to puff up slightly.

8. Poke a hole in the center of each ball, then briefly twirl it around your finger until the hole is about 1.5" in diameter.

9. Cover the bagels and let them rise for 45 min.

10. Mix the ingredients for the water bath in a large pot and bring it to a boil. Also preheat the oven to 400°F.

11. Place each bagel, one at a time if necessary, in the boiling water. They should float to the top after a few seconds. Boil one side 2 min, then flip over and boil the other side for another 2 min.

12. Bake the bagels for 20-25 min. Flip them over after 15 minutes to help them stay round.

Notes

• Overproofing the bagels (i.e. 1h15 instead of 45 min) causes them to be flatter.

Questions

• How should I rest and shape the dough after the first rise? The recipes I've read disagree about how to do this. The options are:

  • Form balls, rest 30 min, form bagels, rest 45 min, steam (chewy)
  • Form balls, rest 30 min, form bagels, steam (regular)
  • Punch down, rest 10 min, form bagels, rest 10 min, steam (new york)

  I think punching the dough down is a good idea, so much so that I suspect the first two recipes just neglected to mention it, so I included it in my recipe.

  I don't understand why I wouldn't form the bagels immediately after forming the balls. The dough loses a lot of gas every time I shape it, so it seems like I'd want to do all the shaping at once, then let it rest for a while before steaming and baking. But of course, none of the recipes I found do that.

  Actually, one good reason for giving the dough some time to rise after shaping the balls is to allow any seams a chance to fill in.

• Should I add malt powder to the dough or the water bath? Again, the recipes I've read disagree about whether or not to do this. The options are:

  • Don't use malt powder at all (new york).
  • Optionally add malt powder to the dough (chewy).
  • Add malt powder to the dough and the water bath, and substitute with brown sugar if you don't have malt powder (regular).

  There's technically a difference between malt powder and malted milk powder. Malt powder is just malt powder, and can (I'm told) be more easily found as barley malt syrup in grocery stores. Malted milk powder is malt powder combined with dehydrated whole milk powder. I've been using malted milk powder, but you might get better results with malt powder.

  For what it's worth, malt powder is considered a "cheating" way to get the flavor of the Maillard reactions, since it contains large amounts of free amino acids. The "not cheating" way to get this flavor is to autolyse the dough, which gives the proteases in the flour time to create free amino acids on their own.

  A number of recipes online claim that malt powder can be substituted with brown sugar. From a chemistry perspective, brown sugar would promote the caramelization reactions instead of Maillard reactions, although the products from both reactions can taste similar. Chemistry aside, both sugar and free amino acids could also speed up fermentation by providing a more easily digestible food source for the yeast. I was curious about how sugar might affect fermentation, and for once I was able to find a good answer quickly:

  Sugar affects the rate of fermentation reactions. A little sugar, up to three percent, speeds up fermentation. The yeast processes the added sugar first, saving the time it would take to break down starch into sugar. With over three percent sugar, however, the fermentation rate no longer increases [1]. Above six percent, sugar actually decreases the rate. This is because the sugar begins to dehydrate the yeast cells. This effect is called "crenation".

  [1] Barham, H. N., Jr. and J. A. Johnson. "The influence of various sugars on dough and bread properties." Cereal Chemistry 28 (1951) 463-473. (Unfortunately I can only find the abstract for this reference, and it's not clear if the percents it refers to are relative to flour or water...)

• I couldn't fit two baking sheets in the oven side-by-side, so next time I'll have to give it some thought if I want to bake more than 6 bagels at once.

  Update: I tried using two racks, but the bagels on the lower rack cooked much faster than those on the upper one. This surprised me a bit, I thought the bagels on the upper rack might cook faster because warmer air rises, but apparently radiation from the coil is the more significant source of heat.
  Perhaps next time I'll try switching the racks every 5 min.

References

• http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/chewy-bagels-recipe
• http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/bagels-recipe
• http://www.sophisticatedgourmet.com/2009/10/new-york-style-bagel-recipe/