Bagel lessons (I know you didn't ask, but I have to tell!)

To fully understand this quest, you would have to know that I went to college in Charlottesville, Va, home of Bodo's Bagels, and that I spent most of my eating out money in college at Bodo's. Bodo's is one of those local hot spots that is always packed, no matter the time of day simply because they serve good food. Nothing too trendy (although they offer lox, bean sprouts, and tofu--it is a college town and more people naturally eat more healthy things), but always fresh, delicious bagels. There were 2 stores in Charlottesville during the time that I was there and they were owned by one man; it wasn't a chain. I've tried several other chain bagel stores since leaving Cville, but nothing even comes close. (Now if any of you are reading this from the Northeast, home of the bagel, I will have to concede that I haven't traveled to the Northeast. But I am willing to wager that Bodo's would stand side by side with the best NY bagel out there).

I normally make bagels for our family once a week--usually for lunch on Thursday or Saturday. Joe makes his into a sandwich, both older boys like theirs with cream cheese, and David and I prefer plain and simple--hot out of the oven with warm butter melted on top. I recently altered my recipe to make 12 instead of 8 bagels to keep up with the appetites around here. They still mix nicely in my bread machine and fit on one cookie sheet for baking.

This morning, I changed a few things about how I make bagels and am so pleased with the results! Tammy's Recipes had a very complicated bagel recipe that overwhelmed me but produced beautiful bagels (it required several timed rises and many more steps than my easy recipe). Intrigued by how nice her bagels looked, I tweaked my process a bit, keeping the simplicity but adding a few new ideas.

The main change that I am happy with is that her recipe recommends forming the dough into a smooth ball and then making a hole in the middle and stretching the dough into bagel shape. This is so much better than my old method of cutting the dough into strips and trying to connect the ends to make a ring shape. No matter how I tried to smooth the dough, my old way always ended up looking misshapen. Today, my bagels came out looking....well, like a bagel should!

Reading the recipe on Tammy's site also showed me how to fix the problem of having too thick a rind on the bottom of my bagels. Today, after boiling the bagels, I laid them briefly on a kitchen towel to dry before I transferred them to the baking sheet. Having no puddles of water under the bagels lets them cook more evenly and prevents the hard crusty bottoms that my bagels used to have.

The last thing that Tammy's site encouraged me to do is to try toppings. This morning I made 6 plain and 6 poppy seed bagels. We used them to make egg and cheese bagel sandwiches for breakfast. Yum! I'll post my updated recipe soon.