A little more than a week ago, the dude and I found ourselves at Veganz, which is basically the only vegan grocery store in the whole of Berlin, and also the only place I know of in this city that sells vegan cream cheese, although The Bio Company does have a similar and more affordable version as well. The main purpose of our trek across town was to purchase Tofutti, and since we don’t frequently make trips to Prenzlauer Berg, I opted to buy two containers of the stuff – one for the recipe in mind and one for whatever else.
Back home, I thought that cream cheese really goes best with bagels, so I decided to try my hand at baking bagels. I used to make them once every few months, but it has been some time since I’ve done that, and I opted to try out a new recipe. The desire for variety aside, this is also due to the fact that my bagels always end up tasting delicious but looking disastrous, so I was hoping that maybe with a different method, I’d turn out some halfway-decent-looking bagels.
That said, I found this recipe for New York-style bagels on Sophisticated Gourmet and it turned out wonderfully. In fact, the only difference is that I used regular flour as opposed to a special bread flour, and they still taste pretty awesome – especially with that vegan cream cheese. And after browsing through the recipes on this website, it’s safe to assume I’ll be trying out more of them in the near future.
Directions:
-Mix together 1/2 cup warm water, 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar and 2 teaspoons yeast. Let it sit for five minutes and then stir until the sugar and yeast dissolve.
-Stir together 3 1/2 cups flour with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Make a well in the middle of the mixture and pour in the water/sugar/yeast.
-Pour 1/2 cup additional warm water into the mixture and stir it all together. If there is remaining flour, add up to another 1/4 cup water to make the dough moist and pliable, but not too sticky.
-Lightly flour a countertop or cutting board and knead the dough for 10 minutes.
-Coat the dough in olive oil and place it in a bowl, covered by a damp dishtowel. Let rise for 1 hour. Then punch the dough down and let it sit for 10 minutes.
-Divide the dough into eight pieces and shape each one into a ball.
-Cover your hands in light flour and use your fingers to make a small hole, or ring, in each piece of dough.
-Place the balls on a baking sheet and cover with the towel for 10 minutes.
-Heat up water in a giant pot until it boils, and then turn down the heat. Place bagels (a few at a time) into the water and allow them to boil for two minutes. Then flip them and go another two minutes, before transferring them to the baking sheet.
-Brush melted butter/margarine on top of the bagels if you want to add toppings. Consider using seeds, salt, garlic or onion. Plain bagels are also good.
-Bake for 20 minutes at 425 F (~220 C).
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