2016 in review, part 3

You may have noticed the abundance of photos in my last couple of posts. Intern Peter told me about the 365 day photo challenge. The actual challenge itself doesn't seem to be clearly defined, but I'm going to try and use it as the basis for yet another attempt at writing a blog post every day for a year, which is going to be my New Year's Resolution for 2017. But rather than taking a photo every day, I'm going to slightly expand the topic. 

• It doesn't have to be a photo, but has to be an image of some sort, so it can be a screenshot, or a motivational poster. It must be something I've created myself though
• I don't have to use a picture created that day, but it must be one created within a week of posting.

Hopefully I can beat my last record of 120 days in a row!

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Unfortunately, it seems like there won't be a Wordpress annual review this year. It seems that it took a team all of December to generate those reports, which is pretty intense, so that makes sense. I guess I will have to make my own.

My blog was viewed 3260 times, by 2011 visitors. 

It was a pretty quiet year for me, with only 30 posts.

My most popular post was last year's post on the Java Certification Exam... which was 625 of my views.

Most of my views were from Australia (1239), with the second highest being India (663) followed closely by the United States (514).

2016 in review, part 2

Continuation from my last post - 2016 in review, part 1.

I mentioned in my last post that I was offered a promotion with strings attached. I was asked to change to another department, and although it was pointed out that the promotion and the change were separate, I got the feeling that it was heavily suggested that I move. I asked for the time to think it over. It was explained that the reason I was being asked to change to the other team was to "bring the people together". Yep. Those were the exact words. It was explained that all the things I do around the office for team morale would be helpful in another area.

At first, I was pretty insulted. I didn't go to university for 6 years to "bring the people together". I (usually) believe that I'm a competent programmer. I'm not the best delivery lead in the world, but my project made it across the line... eventually. There's more to me than the social stuff.

I was also asked to act as delivery lead on a project. I think it was a bit of a disaster, as we ran overtime and overbudget, and didn't deliver everything. However, my boss did challenge me to improve the performance, and we blew that target out of the water. The performance tester said she had never seen such a big improvement before.

During the project, I think I realised what my strength is: I am crazy, but somehow, I manage to bring everyone else along my crazy journey. Towards the end of the project, everyone was voluntarily pulling crazy hours, everyone was really invested in the outcome of the project, and the words "I have a crazy idea" brought smiles to people's faces rather than fear. Not that this is a good trait to have, but when you're facing a deadline, and you just need to get something done, it comes in handy.

But the entire project was misery on top of misery for me. I shouldn't judge based on one experience, but I feel like management is not for me.

I deliberated over the decision to change teams for quite a while, and in the end, decided to pull the trigger and make the change. Maybe this will help with my misery. I've been in my new team for a few weeks now, and so far I'm loving it. Not that I hated my old team, but I think the change of pace is nice. I made a farewell video for my own farewell. It was a music video, parodying Taylor Swift's Shake It Off. It was great fun filming it, and though I didn't manage to get everyone I wanted in the video, I think it turned out OK. I had someone from the bank's choir group sing the song, and someone from another team put together the final soundtrack.

During my misery, one of the few things that kept me sane was the few minutes a day I put aside to work on learning a new language. I mentioned a while back that I wanted to learn French to watch more happy French man videos, and I had quite a long streak going in Memrise. I also downloaded an app called Hello Talk that lets you connect with people to practice speaking to them.

You can correct people's sentences with what the correct version should be, and it also includes an auto-translate function, to keep the conversation going (yes, I know I missed the ka in that sentence...).

The app is pretty cool, but it is a bit hard to keep a conversation going, especially with the time difference. I feel like I have made a friend out of it though, a French-Canadian guy who also loves cooking and movies. He has sent me a few photos of his family, and I've sent him some photos of my cooking.

Although I did start learning because of food, I was also challenged to read Le Petit Prince, and my French is nowhere near good enough to do that yet, so I think I'll continue until I can.

What I do like is that I've actually started some conversations with people who I've always found it difficult to talk to because of French - mainly a couple of Belgian people, who also happen to speak French. I think it's just something that most people can relate to (learning a new language, not necessarily learning French itself), especially as there are a lot of people whose native language isn't English. The head of my new area is also from Belgium, so it might be a good ice-breaker for me.

The other big thing that happened this year is that I developed my first major crush since dating MrFodder. The guilt of it ate away at me for a very long time, but there was also that exciting, butterflies in your stomach feeling whenever I saw him. The constant fluctuations between those two feelings would make anyone seasick. I would catch myself e-stalking him on the office messaging tool to try and time my water breaks with his so that we'd meet in the kitchen, and then berate myself for doing something so childish. (On a more positive note, I did end up drinking a lot more water during this time.)

I ended up asking a few people who have been in a relationship for a while, and the general feeling is that it is completely natural to feel this way, as long as you don't act on it. I wonder why nobody ever talks about it. If I didn't already know of a married friend who had a crush on someone outside his marriage, I would have just assumed that it wasn't a normal thing, and continued thinking that I'm a terrible person (I still think that I'm a terrible person, but I've come to terms with it now).

This probably belongs in its own blog post, but I feel like now is a good time to discuss it.

Some reasons why having a crush on someone outside of your relationship should be considered a normal thing:

• for the most part, I think it's hard to control who you have feelings for. Sometimes you just happen to meet someone and click with them.
• the idea that you're only ever going to be attracted to one person is probably not true for everyone
• I think in a long-term monogamous relationship, it can be easy to fall into a rut - not that this excuses having a crush, but I think it's one of the reasons why it might happen
• your partner may not have every single desirable trait that you want, but they have enough for you to have decided to stay with them. You might come across a person that has the missing traits (but not necessarily all the traits your partner has). It seems natural to feel that "grass is always greener" pull. 

I think the biggest thing for me was how much I liked the excitement of it all. I don't think I ever really wanted something to happen with him. Maybe it was the high school crush experience that I never really had the chance to experience, and will not experience now. If I want to speak to MrFodder, I'll just go up and speak to him. No matter how stupid the words that come out of my mouth are, I am not afraid that he'll refuse to speak to me in the future. If I wanted to talk to The Crush, then I had to concoct some excuse to go and talk to him - we are in an office after all, and we're supposed to be working. Even though talking to him is so relaxed and easy, I still fear the rejection of having him say that now is not a good time to talk. And I can't explain why, but the whole process of engineering a plan to go and talk to him is something I enjoy doing; maybe I see it as a challenge? Maybe I'm just good at running down various scenarios and coming up with plans on how to deal with them.

I was quite wary of crossing the emotional cheating line. The aforementioned married friend with a crush said that the line is when you start feeling like you'd rather be with your crush than with your actual partner, and though there was a period where it might have been a bit iffy whether I had crossed that line or not, as things are standing now, I am well away from that line. 

The other question I asked was whether it was something worth telling your current partner about, and the unanimous vote there was for not telling your partner. Well, as you can see from this blog post, I have blatantly ignored that advice. I think the reasoning behind that advice is that it's a selfish thing to do in a way. It serves to relieve your own conscience, while burdening your partner with the feeling that they must be inadequate in some way for you to have developed a crush on someone else. Personally, I don't think that's the case (see the reasons above). I guess it was a bit selfish though, as I didn't plan to act on the crush, so it's something I could have easily taken to the grave.

But the knowledge that it's perfectly normal did help a lot, and I hope that if someone else reading this finds that they're in the same situation, it makes them feel better, too.

So the end of the year has me starting in a new team, I've definitely grown a lot this year, and hopefully I'll do a bit more next year.

2016 in review, part 1

Apologies for the long absence. We moved and didn't have internet for over 2 months, and the thought of writing an entire blog post on my phone didn't really appeal to me all that much.

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This has been a pretty big year for me, and I feel like I've grown a lot from it. It wasn't all positive, but whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

I'm pre-empting the usual Wordpress generated post, because I feel like a lot happened this year, and this post will end up being multiple parts.

New Year's Resolutions
So in my post from last year, I had a couple of resolutions:
1) Dress properly at work. I actually managed this one! It's the first time I've stuck to a resolution. It was a bit of a struggle, especially during the busier periods at work, and I did slack off at the end and give up on stockings (as there were only 2 weeks left of work, and I couldn't be bothered buying another pair).

Which speaking of, I lost count of how much money I spent on stockings. I kept getting runs in them and having to buy a new pair. Same with my work shoes, which now have a giant hole on them, and again, I didn't bother replacing them, because it was so close to the end of the year.

It's difficult to try and work out what the result of my resolution has been. On one hand, I ended up befriending someone quite senior in the organisation, I got offered a promotion (with strings attached), I was asked to act as delivery lead on a project. On the other hand, I have been building up to these things for quite a while, and how much of it can be attributed to a change in attire, and how much of it is just a natural progression of my career?

I didn't really notice any difference in how I was treated. Even when Mark suggested I try curling my hair and wearing contacts, and nobody even noticed. Or maybe it looked bad and everyone was too polite to say anything, like when I had to get my make-up done for the Spring fashion carnival event, and James gave a gasp of horror, but said nothing.

I'm still undecided whether I'll continue it next year. On one hand, there's that whole dress for the job you want thing (although I don't know that this is the job I want...). On the other hand, my new team is quite casual, and I stand out a bit. Although I have noticed that since I joined, a couple of the other developers are starting to dress up a bit. I don't know if that's related to me, or related to another developer who kinda swapped teams with me and has also started dressing up.

2) Write a book. I made absolutely no progress on this. I was actually challenged to write a story, which is currently in the incubation phase, and I've been doing some research on it, but I haven't actually put any words down. Watch this space though, as the resolution I've picked for next year will be related to the failed attempt this year.

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So to rewind back to earlier in the year. I have mentioned a few times that I have been miserable in my team for a while. The work itself isn't bad and the people are nice, but I was beginning to lose the desire to go into work. However, this is the only team I've ever been in, and who's to say it isn't worse elsewhere? I did actually apply for another role in a different department (financial crime), but didn't get it. I was at the point where I was ready to apply outside the organisation when I was challenged to a croissant bake-off, and I realised that maybe the onus is on me to make my work enjoyable, not the other way around. I don't have to love my job, it can be the thing that I do so that I have the resources to do the things I love.

Word got out that I was a baker, and I was asked to participate in a cheesecake bake-off.

This was around the time that our regular Friday drinks event was cancelled for budget reasons, so the team morale was quite low. I suggested we use the cheesecake bake-off to raise money for our own self-funded drinks event - where we'd buy the alcohol ourselves and people would chip in to keep it going, the initial money being used to seed it. We ended up raising quite a bit of money, so I began organising the drinks event. However, Julian asked me something about liquor licenses so I did a bit of research and found that we do need to apply for a liquor license to serve alcohol, and it's not cheap. So we concocted the idea of having people pay an entry fee for some other event, at which we would just happen to serve alcohol. And thus the Art Appreciation Society was born.

I thought I'd ask the compliance / legal team whether we'd be OK to do this, just to be on the safe side. Funnily enough, nobody seemed to have a definitive answer, and I got shunted around to various risk and legal teams before someone decided to make a call and say that we weren't allowed to do it on our floor, but we could do it via the catering company as they're licensed, or go to a bar instead.

Drinks was cancelled, and I became the Grinch who stole Christmas, with various people saying I should have just done it anyway, as nobody would have dobbed me in. Despite the criticism, I feel like I did the right thing. I introduced the pizza trolley instead, with pizza, chips and soft drink, and also a samosa afternoon. I ended up taking a couple of weeks off, and I realised nobody took up the role in my absence. One of the first things I was asked on my return was, "Will there be a pizza trolley this week?" and it made me feel sad. I decided to cut down, and instead of doing a weekly thing where everyone chips in on the day, we would raise money over several weeks and once we had enough money, do a larger event for the whole floor.

Our first event was a cheese and meats platter, which was incredibly successful, and the second event was a high tea, which was also a hit. I've been trying to reflect on what effect this has had on people's perception of me, and it has been interesting.

Someone called me "social", which I think is bizarre because as soon as the prep work for the events is done, I prefer to vanish rather than mingle with everyone. I think he is confusing "polite" with "social" as people will often strike up conversations with me, but I very rarely strike up a conversation on my own. Mostly because I still feel like I'm wasting people's time by talking to them.

I'm also seen as the "weird one" as whenever there is something unusual in the office, I often get messages asking if it was me. Granted, about 90% of the time, it is me, so I'm trying to vary it up a bit so that I'm not the instant suspect all the time. I'm not sure how I feel about this reputation that I've built. I don't purposely go out of my way to be unusual, it's just that some of the things I do just happen to be considered unusual out of context. For instance, when I walked to the train station holding a giant box above my head, it's because Intern Daniel said he didn't think I was strong enough to do it, and I had to prove him wrong. But anyone seeing us walk out of the office together wouldn't have heard that conversation, and would just see me with a box above my head.

The strange behaviour does mean I've become somewhat notorious, and I will write about what that might have meant for me tomorrow.

Tarte Aux Pommes, Take 1

The past few days have been an emotional rollercoaster and it feels good to be back in the kitchen cooking for fun.

If you remember from my loss at the bagel bake-off, the final bake-off to determine who is the master baker on the floor is going to be a tarte aux pommes challenge (French apple tart), or the variant tarte aux pommes normande (Normandy variant of the French apple tart, typically with custard and sliced almonds, or almond paste).

I tried tarte aux fraise not long ago, with David Lebovitz's interesting recipe for French tart dough (hint: there's no rolling required!), which he learned from French chef Paule Caillat. The tart crust itself was decent, but the cream wasn't great. :( I thought I could just leave out the gelatin, as Amanda's boyfriend can't have pork, but it just went really runny.

I also didn't have a tart pan back then, so it looks ugly, too.

I debated whether to do the tarte aux pommes or the tarte aux pommes normande, as Michael is from Normandy, so I assume he'll be making that, and it does sound fancier. But, I do know that there are some people at work who are allergic to nuts, so I'm wondering if it'll be a disadvantage to prepare one with nuts. But then again, it could be an advantage, as more people will eat the non-nuts one, just because they can, and they won't vote. Which will leave less of it for the people who can compare the two and cast a vote. In the end, I decided to go with the tarte aux pommes because even though my French is improving, there are more English recipes for the non-Normandy version, and that's better for me.

Since my pastry mat is at the new house, I had to use the no-rolling recipe again. So I used that for the tart crust, but for the tarts themselves, I found two variants I wanted to try (I asked MrFodder which of the apple purée or custard base ones would be better, and he said he's biased because is crazy about custard. 8 years together and I am still learning new things about him). So I decided to make both and let his co-workers decide.

First, the tart crust. I was inspired by the episode of Yakitate Japan!!! where Yukino makes the reverse fold tart dough, but I don't have icy hands, and I also couldn't find a recipe that uses that technique. So here's the David Lebovitz method:

Tart Crust
Ingredients
85g (3 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (I used canola)
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

160g (5.5oz, or 1 rounded cup) flour

Method
1. Preheat oven to 210 degrees Celcius. Put the butter, oil, water, sugar and salt in a medium-sized oven-proof bowl.

2. Put the bowl in the oven for 15 minutes, until you start to get brown bits.

3. Add the flour. It will start to bubble up, so be careful when adding the flour. Start stirring to mix together. It says keep going until it starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. I don't really know what that means, but I kept going until it was ball-like.

4. Probably a holdover from all the cake baking I do, but I line my tart pan with baking paper to stop it sticking, but I'm not sure it's needed, as I find the tart doesn't stick to the pan.

5. Put the dough in the pan and spread it out with a spatula. Once it's cool enough, use your fingers or a fork to press it up into the sides. If you have too much on one side, it's easy to tear the surplus dough off and patch up the side with less. The author says to reserve some to patch up broken bits after baking, but I found I didn't have any dough leftover. :(

6. Pierce with a fork about 10 times, and bake for 15 minutes.

It looks kinda OK in that photo, but from this angle.... disaster!

It seems you might need to blind bake it with baking paper and weights. I have pie weights, but you can use beans or rice instead (I read that if you do use beans or rice, throw it out afterwards, you can't eat it.)

Now for the filling.

The first recipe is from kitchn - http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-tarte-aux-pommes-1-63286

(It's for a 10-11" tart, but I only have a 9" tart pan, but that just meant I had a bit of apple leftover. I also modified the recipe slightly as I couldn't be bothered making the apricot glaze from preserved apricots, and used apricot jam instead.)

Ingredients
For the filling:
7 medium-sized (6oz) apples, peeled, cored and quartered lengthwise
1/2 lemon
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 cup warm apricot glaze

1 10 or 11-inch prepared tart shell*, refrigerated (I used David Lebovitz's tart instead).

For the apricot glaze:
1/4 cup apricot jam
2 tablespoons water

Method
1. Preheat oven to 205 degrees Celcius. Take 4 apples and dice them up. Put them in a medium saucepan, with sugar and water.

Yeah, I know I said medium, but we don't have a medium-sized saucepan, but I'm sure it'll work out... Do as I say, not as I do.

2. Cook over medium for about 3 minutes, until you can smell that lovely apple-y smell. Remove the lid and keep cooking until it looks a bit like compote (I don't really know what that is, so I'd say until it looks like stewed apples) (or in my case, because I couldn't put the lid on, just keep cooking).

(See? It all fits now...)

3. Slice the remaining apples into 1/8 inch slices.

4/ Fill the tart with the the apple compote. Try to make the layer as even as possible, otherwise you'll have a hard time laying out the slices on top.

(Again, do as I say, not as I do, I had trouble laying out the slices, because some bits were higher than others.)

5. Lay out the apple slices in a circle. Then, if you can fit them, make another circle of slices. Then fill the middle however you want. Brush with melted butter.

6. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the apples are brown, but not burnt. I had to turn it 180 degrees halfway, as my oven isn't even.

7. To make the apricot glaze, in a small saucepan, put the jam and water. Heat over low heat to reduce until it's spreadable.

8. I saw this thing on Joy of Baking where she coats it with sugar and broils it to caramelize the top, and I tried that, but I failed and just burnt my apples instead. :(

9. Caramel top or not, brush with the apricot glaze. If you have a tart pan with a removable bottom, turn a bowl upside down and put the pan on top. The side will fall away making it easy to remove the tart and place it on a cooling rack.

10. Cut a slice and enjoy.

The second recipe is from La Recette du Jour, and features custard - http://www.larecettedujour.org/2010/12/a-classic-french-tarte-aux-pommes.php

Ingredients
Crème pâtissière (the custard)
25 g flour
1 egg
2 egg yolks
50 g sugar
vanilla (1 pod, or 2 teaspoons of paste / essence)
250 ml milk
a knob of butter

Filling
5 apples
Apricot glaze (see above - you should have enough for two tarts)

Because I'm a snob, I omitted the flour, because I want to learn how to make crème pâtissière properly.

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celcius. Warm the milk and vanilla (if using a bean or paste, if using essence, add it with eggs) in a medium-sized saucepan until it's just at its boiling point.

2. Beat the other ingredients together in a bowl.

3. Slowly pour the milk into the egg mixture, making sure to whisk the entire time, so you don't cook the eggs. Then move the mixture back to the saucepan, and return to a low heat. Constantly stir it, it should start to thicken.

Mine ended up curdling a bit. That's what I get for being a snob - the author said the flour prevents this.

4. Cover with plastic wrap and cool. Make sure the plastic wrap is touching the surface so it doesn't develop a skin.

5. Peel, core, quarter and slice up the apples.

6. Put the custard in the tart crust.

7. Lay the apples out on top.

8. Bake for 30 minutes (I had to turn it halfway, as my oven is uneven.)

You can kinda see the ugly curdled custard underneath. :(

9. Glaze with apricot glaze.

10. Remove from pan, slice up and enjoy!

MrFodder says he prefers the non-custard one better. I don't know if that's a reflection of my bad quality custard or... it just means further experiments are required. He did say the custard wasn't "vanilla-y" enough. Maybe I should practice making crème pâtissière on its own, as it seems like an important skill in French dessert-making.

Will it press - Bacon and Eggs

As I knew I would be making bagels, I offered to make breakfast bagels for the early starters on the support team. Except my early morning bagel baking, combined with a cancelled train meant I couldn't make it in before they left for breakfast on Monday, and I don't have their phone numbers, so I couldn't tell them I was running late. So breakfast bagel day was delayed to today. This is the one that they usually buy in the mornings:

Of course, I couldn't turn down an opportunity for another "Will it press?" experiment, but after talking it over at dinner with the family, there were some constraints that I had to place:

•  No bacon or egg could touch the grill itself, nor any bacon fat. Some people at the office aren't able to eat bacon for religious reasons, and one person in the office is vegan, so I didn't want to cross contaminate the grill.
• No strong bacon smell should linger in the kitchen. Though all the early starters said they love the smell of bacon, I don't think everyone in the office agrees.

What I ended up using:

• butter (because Roger said he loves bacon cooked with butter)
• one egg per bagel
• two strips of bacon per bagel
• aluminium foil (it says it's "heavy duty", but all of them said that, so I don't know if it's really any different to regular aluminium foil from the supermarket, but I wanted to prevent tears)
• egg flipper

To cook the bacon, I had the idea of wrapping it in foil. After the dismal attempt at cooking pancakes using baking paper, I thought foil would be better at transferring heat. I've used foil to line public BBQs before, and found that oil still tends to leak through where the two pieces of foil overlap. So I decided to double wrap it. Once to completely encase the pieces of bacon, and then seam-side down, encased in another foil wrap, so even if the oil leaked out of the first wrapper, it would get caught in the second.

I simply sandwiched it in the press, and left it for a minute. 

After a minute, I lifted the press to take a look, and the package ballooned like this:

I figured it was steam, so I unwrapped the foil a little and let the steam out. The bacon wasn't really cooked at this point, so I put it on for another couple of minutes.

It ended up being the soft-cooked bacon, which Other Anthony said is how he prefers it. I forgot to take a photo of it, unfortunately, but here it is on top of one of the bagels:

 The egg was the trickier part. Both Other Anthony and Roger said they preferred eggs sunny-side up, which meant that I couldn't really press the egg. My first attempt was to see if the press was hot enough to cook the egg. I melted a bit of butter to grease the foil, and cracked the egg. It took a while, but eventually, the egg did cook, but it didn't have the proper browned look of a regular fried egg.

It was really easy to make a sunny-side up egg though, as the yolk didn't really cook at all (was just a bit cooked on the bottom). The only problem I had was that the egg stuck to the foil. I added extra butter for the second and third attempts, which made the egg a bit easier to remove, but I didn't want to drown the egg in butter, so I didn't add too much.

 Lastly, I halved and toasted the bagels (which was pretty tough, as the bagels were already so thin!), put it together, and served. :)

I accidentally left Darren's bacon in the grill too long, so it ended up being the crispy kind, but luckily, he said he prefers it that way.

Other Anthony, Roger and Darren were all really happy to get breakfast in the morning, and Anthony and Peter caught me in the kitchen making the bagels and were jealous they didn't get any. Although, Anthony did offer to buy me a breakfast bagel tomorrow morning, but I have my regular breakfast, so I turned him down.

So yes, you can press bacon and eggs (if you call what I did with the eggs "pressing" it).

Bagel Bake-Off!!!

After 3 false-starts, we finally had it, although this one was looking like a false-start, too, as MrBrioche wasn't able to bake over the weekend because he had to look after his kids. I'm pretty sure Catherine forgot entirely, as I heard she was out all weekend - though she didn't even say anything this morning, which is unusual, as she usually apologises for forgetting. Michael sent an email last night saying he might not make it as his daughter is sick, but he came to work in the end, so it was me against him, a rematch of the croissant bake-off.

I used the recipe from the book redbeanpork gave me: Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice. You can find the recipe here: https://smittenkitchen.com/2007/09/bronx-worthy-bagels/. He really wasn't kidding that it makes 12 large bagels!

Unlike my first attempt, which resulted in:

This recipe requires less proofing on the day of cooking, which is what I wanted, because as my new cooking hero says:

A good bagel need not be hot, but it should be fresh. As we've found in the past, a bagel's at its best within 30 minutes of baking. After this point, the crackly crust loses its crispness and the innards start to get tough rather than tender. For this reason, it's virtually impossible to get a good bagel anywhere other than at the location at which it's baked.

As I'm already getting up at the ass-crack of dawn anyway, I might as well put the early-rise to good use.

So the day before, I prepared my dough.

This recipe uses the sponge technique, which I kinda screwed up by forgetting to whisk the yeast and flour together before adding the water, but it was somewhat OK afterwards.

The kneading took a lot longer than the recipe said, and I found my dough was quite dry, but I think part of that is because I wasn't using a stand mixer, and it was hard to knead that much dough on the pastry mat as it kept shifting. But it balled up fine, and was easy to stretch out (I made sure to make the holes much bigger this time - I learned from my first failed attempt).

I didn't get to do the float test, as we had to leave for my parents' house, but they came out of the fridge in the morning looking great!

Into the water to boil (similar to my first attempt, I added some malted syrup to the water, to add extra flavour to the crust).

Then disaster! After boiling the bagels came out really flat. :(

I didn't take any pictures, as I had to bake them and get to work, but here they are in the oven:

And on the tray:

The taste and texture was fine, but they were like little frisbees, not bagels. :( I think my first attempt was much better!

Here are the contenders - can you guess which one is mine?

Michael made his the night before, so they were a bit stale, but other than being a bit dry, they were better than mine.

Unfortunately, I got crushed, with the score:

Michael - 11
Tied - 3
Me - 2

With one person even awarding Michael 10s in all the categories, and 1s for me.

I've done a bit of research into why mine were flat. Possible culprits: water wasn't hot enough (highly likely, as you can see from the photo), overproofed, also likely, as I was busy finishing my Beef Stroganoff as well in the morning). Will have to try again another time.

Michael said we are now even, so we need a final bake-off and the challenge is tarte aux pommes, date: 3rd October.