Learning the 'art of bagel'

My second ever batch of bagels. Happy Dough Boy! 

Well, I've only ever made Bagels once before. They came out great on that occasion, but they were small in size - this time I wanted to improve on this & make them normal size.

My baking "bible" - The River Cottage Bread Book - is currently on long-term-loan to a neighbour so I looked up a recipe online to use instead.

River Cottage Bread - Worth a look.

Well, I should confess at this point that I'm not great at following recipes, & this was indeed the case today. I ended up mixing all 4 tablespoons of sugar into the water at the beginning - didn't realise this until I was looking at the recipe again once the Bagels were in the oven as I prepared to write up this piece. oops. 3 tbsp were supposed to just go in the boiling water to give that extra sweetness to the crust.

What this could mean: getting technical now - the sugar ties up the water in the dough, so it can leave too little for the Yeast to use.  

However, I think I have been lucky & got away with this amount of extra sugar today. The Bagels dough still doubled in size in 1hr, & they continued to grow when poached.... 

 Here's my dough divided in 8 equal balls (after 1hr proving in one lump).

How do Bagels get their holes? Useful second use for our Porridge stick! 

Ready for poaching:

One minute either side - you have to make sure they don't stick to the bottom at first.

The light flecks in the bagel come from the wholemeal flour I added to the mix.