I found this recipe by Ruby Tandoh in page 6 of 'Cook', The Guardian's last Saturday's food supplement. I read the recipe quickly and sounded easy so I decided to try yesterday. It worked!!!
The picture in Cook looks like this...
The recipe says you need:
75ml vegetable oil or sunflower oil (but I only used a few table spoons)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 tsp instant dried yeast
150ml lukewarm water
300g strong white flour
1 1/2 tbsp onion granules
1 tbsp soft light brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
Fine polenta or semolina, for dusting
This makes 6 bagels
See, nothing unusual that goes into the ingredients so it sounds even more easy and promising, does it?
I bought Chives thinking that I could add that to give more flavour!
So, here is the recipe...
1. First you fry onions for 5 minutes or until golden brown. Drain and leave to cool. I only used a few tbsp of oil and there were a lot of oil residue that seeped through a kitchen paper! Imagine you use all 75ml, that's a lot of oil....
2. Dissolve the yeast in 2 tbsp of warm water. When it says warm water, use from 150ml listed in the list of ingredients earlier. I did not think of this earlier, and ended up filling a measuring cup with 150ml luke warm water and spooned out 2 tbsp of water from it, silly me! It may be logical to you but I did not get the difference between 'instant dried yeast' and Easy Baking Yeast I already have in my cupboard. Are these the same thing? I just used mine anyway, after all both are dried yeast.
3. Mix the flour, onion granules, sugar and salt in a large bowl, then add the yeast (2) and 'the remaining' water. (see what I meant earlier about the water - I only realised this when it came to this point...).
4. Stir, then tip the dough from its bowl on to a clean surface and knead for 5 minutes. Yes, only faaaive minutes! How simple that is!
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| Ready to knead....? Only 5 minutes! |
5. "You should notice the dough becoming smoother as you knead", Ruby says.
6. Work the fried onion into the dough until well dispersed. Well, this is not as easy as it sounds. Well oiled chopped fried onions kept sliding and escaping from the dough as I tried to knead. I thought I drained the oil off onions but they were still oily and onions kept sliding off the dough. That meant that you got to work even harder to imbed them right into the dough and knead even harder, adding onions little by little.
However, eventually, I managed to mix all fried onions into the dough. Phew!
7. Put the dough in a bowl, covered loosely with cling film and leave at room temperature for an hour or an hour and a half until almost doubled in size. Ok, and off I went to watch Good Wife that I recorded last week to catch up. I feel already domesticated!
Before ....
and after ... not sure if it got double in size but bigger anyway.
8. Ruby says "divide the dough into 6 pieces.
45 minutes to wait, so off I went to watch more TV, ha ha ha.
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| Does it look upside down to you? It does to me ..... |
10. I am not sure if they rose at all, but after 45 minutes, I decided to start cooking. Pre-heated to 180C/350F/gas mark4. Meanwhile, boil a large pan of water to the boil, add the bicarbonate of soda to the boiling water, then turn the heat down until it's gently simmering. Add the bagels and boil for 1 minutes on each side. Then at this point I have realised that I forgot to buy polenta or semolina flour to to dust a baking tray to prevent boiled bagels from sticking. I had to use plain flour to dust the tray but also had to wipe each bagel off any water with kitchen paper before I put them onto the tray. Silly me! I also realised that I had totally forgotten to mix chives through the dough when I was mixing fried onions. Anyway, bake bagels in the oven for 25 minutes. Once baked, transfer them onto a wire rack to cool.
...and here there are ... my first home-made bagel! They don't look too bad, perhaps the oven temperature might have been a bit too high as they turned brown quicker than they should.
Once they were cool, cut them into half and toast them. It looks fine inside too, and you can see real chopped fried onions!
I am really proud of myself for making them! I should have sprinkled rock salt for decoration and forgot, though.
I now know how to bake bagels. Ruby's recipe is that simple, however it does take a bit of your time for baking mere 6 of them. Next time, I shall add chives, pre-heat the oven at slightly lower temperature (I think our oven tends to get too hot sometimes), remember to buy semolina or polenta flour for dusting a baking tray and sprinkle rock salt to finish off.
That's all forks!
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