Yet more bagels!

Mmh, cinnamon and raisin, my favourite.  Having had a poorly Arthur for a few days, Isobel and I made bagels on Friday whilst Arthur was in bed!  It was fun - though you have to be in the right mood to cook with a toddler I think.

We decided that we didn't have any bagels left in the freezer so action was needed and a change of bagel was also needed.  Found a few recipes, and mixed and matched a bit.  We ended up doing one which you left in the fridge overnight and cooked first thing so you have lovely freshly baked bagels for breakfast - lovely (though not so lovely for the waistline!).  We only made 6 as we were testing out the whole leave in the fridge thing.

So here, goes:

(a) Sift 1lb of bread flour into a bowl with 2.5 tsp of cinnamon and about 3/4 tsp of salt.  Mix together then make a well in the centre.

(b) Measure out 280ml of hand hot water and add to that about 3g dried active yeast (we used about half a sachet of the Allinsons yeast which is 7g in total but I wasn't being hugely accurate!) and 3g sugar.  One recipe we saw asked for Malt Extract instead of sugar but as we didn't have any and the previous recipe we used only used sugar, we plumped for sugar.  Seemed OK!

(c) Add this warm water to the flour and mix it in, then kneed for about 8 - 10 minutes until you have a smooth dough.

Toddler kneeding - not sure how effective it is!

(d) Add about 135g raisins (or mix of raisins and sultanas - we had to use sultanas as the raisins were no more!) and kneed those in.

(e) Then make the bagels - divide the dough into 6 balls.  We used a more prescriptive technique this time - after the random shapes last time (which were quite fun though!).  Found some instructions on an American blog which I'll try to find the link to.  Flatten each ball with your hand.  Then fold over one side into the centre and press down.  Do the same with the other side - so you get a seam in the middle where the two sides have come together.

(f) fold this in half and press down again and then roll into a sausage about 20 cm long and tapering at one end.

OK, so this isn't 20cm long but this is a sausage shape - roughly....

(g) Open up the seam at one end and then put the tapered end into it to make a bagel shape.  Pinch them closed.  Put the finished bagels on a floured towel on a baking tray.

There is a little Isobel one in there somewhere.....

(h) Cover with cling film and leave in fridge overnight.  Now, ours didn't rise that much overnight which we were a little concerned about but decided to keep going anyway!

(i) Preheat the oven to 250 deg centigrade (or max temperature) and put pan of water on to boil.  When it's boiling add 2 tbs sugar and then, using a slotted spoon, pop in about 3 bagels.  Turn them over after about 45 seconds and leave them to poach until they float.  Take them out and put them, seam side down, on a baking tray.

(j) Bake in the oven for about 14 minutes or until brown and lovely looking.

'I want my bagel'

(K) Cut open, add some butter and eat! Yummy yummy.