Project of the day
Store-bought bagels have been steadily getting more and more expensive, and finally reached the US$1/bagel point a couple of weeks ago (with luxury “wood-oven” bagels clocking in at US$1.50/bagel.) This is kind of ridiculous, so I’ve started making my own. They are time-consuming (these 16 bagels took me about 3 hours – mainly thumb-twiddling while waiting for the little yeastie beasties to perform their reenactment of the United States economy – to make,) but 3 hours + US$3.50 in materials and electricity is much better than US$16.00 for the privilege of getting older staler bagels from the Big Big Store.
And, to my amazement, my children will actually eat them, which reduces the morning scramble to wedge food into them to a dignified gallop (and cuts out the periodic “we’re going to have to eat breakfast at Marsee Baking” breakfast of last resort.)
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The problem with fresh homemade baking is the “homemade” part; the bears prefer the food that isn’t being placed in front of them at any given time, and on schoolday mornings they also would much rather prefer being allowed to sleep until the sun has had a chance to warm things up a bit (I believe that would be 1pm, which would be just in time to miss school alltogether.)
That recipe you point to really jacks up the amount of yeast in the dough – it uses twice the amount of yeast that I use, and has less than half of the rising time (my recipe – from How To Cook Everything – has 2h40 minutes of rising time, which can be pushed up to overnight if I stuff the offending dough into the fridge.) I’ll have to try it one of these days when I’ve got more time for food prep.
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It’s a surprise that your kids will eat fresh homemade baking?
*blink*blink*blink*
We tended to devour baking of all kinds with extreme prejudice when I were a lad; are they not much for cereal grains in general?
You might find http://www.underthehighchair.com/2009/01/diy-bagel-tutorial-and-more-history.html of interest; I doubt it will cut the total baking time but it’s got lots of little Montrealais bagel details.