Bagels again

This time, I reverted to the sponge method and the overnight sojourn in the ‘fridge.  This shifts the intense labor to  day 1, so there’s a chance of actually having a bagel during the morning hours of day 2.  Things went along pretty well except that I didn’t check my supplies first and had to substitute brown sugar for malt.  I did have the so-called “vital wheat gluten” and put in 1/4 cup, supposedly reducing the flour by that amount, but the dough kept absorbing more and more flour without ever getting to that ideal state of supple, but not tacky. Maybe it was the moisture in the air? The shaping into rolls went well, then into decent-looking bagel shapes:

 Next morning, all I had to do was preheat the oven and bring a big pot of water to boil, adding 1 T baking soda.  When boiling, I did 1 1/2-2 minutes per side, but I think that made them too chewy, so next time, I’ll be careful to do just 1 minute a side.  The other problem is they were still a bit flat…not sure why, but we’ll be trying again, so we’ll see. 

The flavor was pretty good, but I’m still not satisfied.

  Cinnamon raisin for Ben’s birthday…

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