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.