Of course the first thing I do when I have a whole evening to myself is decide to bake something so intense, time-consuming, ambitious, and complicated that it borders on madness.
But I got to break out the dough hook for my Kitchenaid stand mixer for the first time!
A few weeks ago, Smitten Kitchen’s bronx-worthy bagels recipe caught my eye. I bought all of the ingredients last week, including the high-gluten flour, which SK wasn’t even able to find in NYC! (she ended up beg-buying a bag from a bakery). But I found it available by-the-pound in the bulk food aisle at Harvest Coop, which I completely adore having right up the street: it’s an amazing organic grocery store that has everything—often cheaper than even Shaws or Hannaford. But last weekend was crazy for me with schoolwork and for Cristo with work-work, so the bagels had to wait.
So I spent the week parsing out what kind of bagels I wanted to make. Definitely “everything”: savory bagels topped with onion, garlic, poppy and sesame seeds, and sea salt. Inspired by the tapenade-coulis-thing that Cristo made for mother’s day dinner, I decided that sundried tomato bagels would be awesome, too. And thanks to a brilliant suggestion from @RickShag, the rest are rosemary bagels (here’s how I improvised: I stripped the leaves from two enormous sprigs; tossed into the food processor along with a couple of garlic cloves; whirled them up; then kneaded that, plus a splash of olive oil, into the dough).
The whole process came in at under the 4 hours that I’d originally guesstimated, but just barely (and obviously not including any cooking). I didn’t bother photographing any of the dough-making, as Smitten Kitchen is a far-superior food photographer. The bagels aren’t much to look at right now, anyway: pale and pasty and damp and oiled. They are in the “retard” phase, which means that they spent last night in my fridge, with the low temperature retarding the action of the yeast. After work today, or Saturday morning, I will boil and bake them. And then there will be pictures.
No Comments