A few weeks ago Nicole of Pinch my Salt tweeted about starting to bake bread from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Bakers Apprentice and called out to all those that might be interested in taking up the challenge along with her. I loved the idea instantly. But I didn’t think I could participate because the local bookstores didn’t carry the book. When I told her how I’d love to hone my bread baking skills but won’t find the book, she instantly offered to send me a copy! I was touched. With a little research, I found an online resource where I could buy this and didn’t have to bother her. But thanks, Nicole, I really appreciate the gesture. :)
The book reached me just in time to try something I’ve had on my mind for a while – bagels! I’ve made soft pretzels before and thought this would be perfect to start with since I’m acquainted with the boiling method.
Now, besides those pretzels, the only kind of bread I’m comfortable baking is focaccia and pizza bread so when flipped through the pages to find the first 200 pages full of methods and techniques, I was flabbergasted. Information overload! I didn’t manage to read through all of it and jumped straight to the page on bagels (not the best thing to do). I’m going to start reading it over before I start with next week’s assignment.
For the bagels, I tried a sweet version – cinnamon and raisin bagels. I followed the recipe as closely as I could but when it came to boiling the bagels, I forgot to add baking soda and so my bagel looked quite ugly. Also, the dough had risen a lot more than I expected so it wasn’t holding shape too well.
Learning from my mishap, I shaped smaller bagels the next day and made sure to add the baking soda in the water before plonking in the bagels. And just by the look of it, I knew these would be perfect! For step by step instructions, you must check out Nicole’s post on bagels.
Let me tell you, after making these bagels, albeit with a few bumps on the way, I feel so much more confident about making bread.