Montreal Bagels... Success!

Hello everyone!

I'm so excited to write this blog because we made bagels over the weekend.  After eating some delicious bagels from St. Viateur Bagel (Montreal, Canada) we decided we had to have more.  So one evening Mr C told me he wanted to make bagels.  I laughed a little at first, but after seeing the excitement in his eyes, what the heck, let's make some bagels.  Treading on unfamiliar territory, we do what normal people do best...we Googl'ed.  The search came up with this recipe: http://www.food.com/recipe/Montreal-Bagels-35261.  They came out wonderfully and even after day 5 of staying out on the counter, they taste and smell great.  All the credit goes to Mr C for all his hard work and his eagerness to always try new things!


 Adopted recipe from http://www.food.com/recipe/Montreal-Bagels-35261

1. Add wet ingredients and ensure everything is well mixed.  Add the flour and continue to mix.  We decided to add 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of honey (instead of syrup).  We also omitted the salt, but this is personal preference. 
2.  Get those hands dirty and knead knead knead.  Make sure you get the flour on the bottom of the bowl.  Once everything has been mixed together start kneading on a flat surface.  Mr C says that the more you knead, the more chewy it tastes, so keep kneading it for at least 10-15 minutes or in my case when I got tired.  Shape it lovingly into a round ball and let it rest for 10 or so minutes (haha isn't it cute?!).  Make sure it's covered because you don't want it to get dry
3.  Cut it up into equal pieces and start making rings! Be creative and find a style you like :)
4. Cover them up with a moist cloth and let them rise for at least 30 minutes.
5.  In the meantime, boil water and then add honey.  We just filled a swallow pot with some water and honey.  The more honey you add the sweeter your bagels will taste.  Dip the bagels into the bath and boil each side for 1 minute
6. Let the bagels dry a bit on a rack and then sprinkle sesame on the top and bottle.  Add whatever floats your boat whether it be sesame, poppy seed etc (in our case we used sesame, a whole bottle worth of sesame :P).  Bake them at 450F.  Make sure you check the bottom of the bagels to ensure they don't burn.  We noticed ours didn't really bake evenly (could be the oven, baking trays who knows) so some parts started to brown before others! Make sure to rotate and check them frequently.
7. Once both sides are brown take them out of the oven and let them chill and relax.

Next step, enjoy with extra cream cheese :D

Hope you enjoyed the commentary and my makeshift tutorial diagram.  Would you like us to tackle something interesting next time? If so let me know in the comments section and we'll work on it :)  

Janet