Homemade Honey Whole Wheat Bagels

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend!  I sure did.  I loved hearing about all of your parents, they sounds like great, funny people!

Even though I talk a lot about Beantown (that would be Boston), my roots are in Jersey, but I think you all knew that anyway.  Once a Jersey girl, always a Jersey girl, right?

When I first moved to Boston, I thought the bagels were the worst thing ever.  They weren’t light and chewy, the outsides were tough, and they were generally disappointing.  See, Jersey has some of the best bagels ever.  They are seriously perfect in every sense of the word.  It’s those teeny tiny mom and pop shops that make the best bagels (kind of like how the best pizza I ever had was in midtown Manhattan in a store where the awning just said “Beer and Pizza”.”  I wish I could find that place again).  Anyway, back to bagels.  In NJ they rock.  Another thing that rocks is bagel nuggets, which are munchkin size pieces of bagels.  I should make those too.

Being the bagel snob I am, I haven’t found any bagels around here that I love.  I figured the best way to remedy that was to just go ahead and make them myself.  I took some inspiration from my dear fried Mark, and went to work.

First I made some dough in the food processor.  I combined:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1.5 cups bread flour
• 2 tsp. yeast
• 2 tbsp.  honey

I pulsed these all together for a few seconds, just to combine them, then poured about 1.5 cups water through the feed tube.  I let this process for about 30 seconds until a ball formed that was a little sticky.  If your dough does not form a ball and is dry, add water 1 tbsp. at a time and process a few seconds after each addition.  If your dough is too wet, do the same thing adding 1 tbsp. flour at a time.

Once the dough is done, I turned it out on my Silpat and kneaded it a few times, then put it in a bowl which I covered with a towel.  This rose for about 2 hours.  I went for a run, took a shower and played with Rufio.  Good times.

After two hours I put the dough back on the (floured) Silpat and deflated it, then let it sit under the towel for another ten minutes.  Next came the fun part.  I divided the dough into 10 balls (I eyeballed it, I would have used a kitchen scale if I had one!)

I rolled each piece into a little bowl, then used my thumbs to put a hole in the center.  I was then able to spread the dough out to make it bagel shaped.

Sure, they are a little lumpy looking, but who cares!  It’s also really important to keep the dough balls and the shaped bagels covered as you work with other ones.

Next, I put my pizza stone in a 400 degree oven and brought a huge pot of water up to a boil.  If you don’t have a pizza stone, check out my OpenSky Shop, I think it’s a MUST HAVE!  I put 5 bagels in at a time, without any problems and let them boil for one minute, before flipping them over and letting them boil for a minute on their other side.  I used a big slotted spoon to remove them and put them on a drying rack.

While these were boiling, I filled a small plate with old fashioned oats and dipped half of the bagels into them.  I love oats on bagels.

Once the bagels were done, I put them on my cake lifter to transfer them to the oven (I don’t have a peel).  This was really a waste of time since I ended up putting them all on the stone by hand.

These bad boys baked for about 25 minutes, until they came out all gloriously browned.

Look how the bottoms came out too…they look like they are from a real NJ bagel shop!

I think that one of the best ways to eat a bagel is as a fried egg sandwich.  Is there anything better than a fried egg?  I think not.  I probably love them so much because my mom had a fried egg sandwich for breakfast almost every morning when she was pregnant with me, but whatever, they rock.

Look how perfect that bagel is!  I feel so proud 🙂

A little Smart Balance and some avocado took this sandwich to a whole new level!

Perfection.  Absolutely wonderful breakfast perfection.  I could cry.

What’s your favorite kind of bagel?  What do you like to eat on your bagels?

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