Bagels ep.2 - Attack of the yeast

🎶Guess who's back, back again. Dylan's back, tell a friend.🎶

What's up, its Dough Dylan bringing you yet another bagel blog. a dough diary. some cooking commentary. a culinary chronicle. okay okay Dylan that is enough shenanigans, let's talk about why we're all actually here today; bagels.

That's right, I'm back and better than ever. The burn on my hand from the last batch of bagels really put up a roadblock on my bagel journey, but my DNA built back better than ever. Since the last bagel episode, I've gotten to do a decent amount of bagel research. I visited the bagel motherland (aka New York) and tested out some of my fiercest competitors, like Utopia Bagels. Utopia is an award winning bagel shop founded in 1981 in Whitestone NYC and were awarded Best Bagel at BagelFest 2024. Now I'm not saying my goal is to win Best Bagel at BagelFest, but I'm not not saying that...

So what's changed since the last time we talked? I got the right yeast. I got the right salt. I got barley malt syrup. Another shoutout to Whole Foods for actually having all the necessary baking goods (look at all this uncompensated advertisement, pls sponsor me). I also had access to a KitchenAid mixer since I made this v2 batch in my childhood kitchen, shoutout to my current sponsors Mr. and Mrs. Astrup. 

So now that I had the right tools and ingredients, I was actually prepped for a potentially successful bagel bake. Now instead of listing the recipe directly on this blog like last time, I'm going to do a self plug and tell you to head on over to recipes.dylanastrup.com, create an account, and find Bagels v2. Or click this link: https://recipes.dylanastrup.com/recipes/25. I need more users on my site so you can tell me what bugs there are so I can (attempt to) fix em.

I usually am extremely nit picky on my own baked goods, for good reason, but I do have to say that these bagels turned out extremely well. They had a nice golden outside, proofed well, the skin wasn't too thick, and the everything topping (which I made myself this time) wasn't too salty. 


Now let's look back at the goals I had set for myself from the v1 recipe attempt. 
  1. Buy the correct ingredients
    • Did that, great work Dylan. I would like to find some naturally high gluten flour, maybe from a kitchen supply store? Also diastatic malt powder.
  2. Lean on the shorter side for the boil bath ~15 seconds
    • Done. I was pretty strict to only allow 15 seconds per side
  3. Figure out the density issue. Yeast? Kneading?
    • Since I changed to instant yeast and a stand mixer this time, I technically don't have a direct answer to what solved this issue, but I am fairly confident it was the yeast not being activated last time. Either way, fixed. 
  4. Egg wash or similar for color
    • Done. Worked. I would still like the bagels to get a little darker on the outside though, will have to work on that.
  5. Learn to shape the bagels better
    • This will (hopefully) just happen over time. These definitely looked more like bagels than last time, so I will allow myself to check this goal off as well
  6. Bagel Boards? Pizza stone??
    • I did try baking a couple bagels on a pizza stone while I was home. I honestly wasn't a huge fan of the thick bottom skin it gave the bagels that were on the stone. I put them directly on the stone, maybe if I just put the sheet tray on the stone it would've been a slightly more mild effect? Bagel boards still need to be looked into.
Overall, a great success especially for only v2. Let's hope I can keep up this improvement for future versions. Speaking of future versions, here's what I'd like to work on in v3. 
  1. Darker color coming out of the oven. Increase temp/time? More malt syrup? Most bagel shops don't use egg wash, how do they achieve the dark golden brown?
  2. Explore benefits of diastatic malt powder
  3. Explore benefits of bagel boards
  4. Explore possible sourdough bagels??
  5. Just noting this here since I don't know where else to keep bagel notes...beer bagels? 
I hope you all have a bagel filled New Years! 

xoxo,

Dyl


p.s. i truly hope theres some nerdy readers who get some enjoyment out of the blog title

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