all dressed in black: I kneaded a bagel

The other night I decided to try my hand at homemade bagels.

When I was thinking about toppings, I got out my caraway seeds to taste one to see if that would be something I would like on my bagel. Well, I had a minor spill when I took the lid off. whoops. I made sure I did a very good job of cleaning them up, because I didn't want anyone to mistake one as a mouse turd in the kitchen!

Here is my water, salt, sugar and yeast mixture. In the future I think I need to use the quick rising yeast and possibly warmer water...but you'll see those pictures later.

Look! I added in the flour! Time to mix it all together by hand. It's a good arm work out and a great way to release frustration.

All mixed together. Now it's time to let it set for 15 minutes(this is the part where the water needed to be warmer and the yeast needed to be quick rising). It really didn't grow at all over those 15 minutes.

Take the dough out and punch it into a rectangle(if unsure of the shape of a rectangle please consult your nearest math text book or simply google it). Leave the dough about 1 inch thick when punching it out.

Then you cut the dough into 1" wide strips, make them into circles with the ends overlapping a little(either twist or pinch the ends together). I made some bigger bagels and some mini bagels.

After you form the strips into bagels, you cover them with a towel and let them chill out for 20 minutes. While they are relaxing under their towel, you boil a gallon of water and add a T sugar to it. After the bagels are done taking their 20 minute time out you put a few at a time into the boiling water and let them simmer until they rise to the top. Scoop those babies out of the water and put them on a towel(not a big plush bath towel, but a non-nubby kitchen towel). Here is the fun part...creating toppings for your baggity bagels. I didn't really plan on making bagels on this particular day, so I hadn't really planned out a lot of good toppings but was able to scrounge up a few tasty things. I added some caraway seeds to some of the bagels and Parmesan cheese to others and a little of both to some of them(gettin' crazy, I know). In retrospect cinnamon and sugar would have been nice too.

This is my big daddy parm and caraway monster delicious bagel before he got popped in the oven.

Oh, look that those tasty bagels cooking right up. Did I mention that you needed to transfer them from their towel to a greased baking sheet? NEVER bake something on a towel in the oven. That could very easily lead to a fire. And you need to heat your oven to 400 degrees. You should have been preheating your oven while you were simmering your bagels, but you wouldn't have known that because I forgot to tell you.

Look! They came out of the oven after 22 minutes for the minis and about 28-30 for the big daddies. They cooled and I put them in a big zip lock. Some of these are going to have to be frozen, because I can not eat that many bagels before they would go bad. Of course, I could share some of them with my friends.