Time to Make the Bagels…

Earlier this month, Kristin over at Scintillator posted a recipe for Tri-Colour Bagels, which she calls “Hound Rounds” because they’re the same colour as her dogs: beagle/basset hound crosses.  Since I had such good luck with her Flax Bagel recipe, I was anxious to try these fancy ones!

I started with one bowl, mixing some of the flour with the yeast, some honey, salt, and warm water.  Then I divided the dough into three bowls, adding white flour to one, whole wheat to another, and rye flour to the third.  Note to self: Next time I buy flour at Bulk Barn, I need to mark the bags so I can tell what kind it is!  I was tasting it, trying to figure it out!  Apparently, I guessed right…

White dough...

 

Whole Wheat dough...should have used a flash for this...light coming in the window threw off the colours...

 

Pumpernickel dough...

 

After letting the doughs rise for about an hour, I divided each piece into 12 smaller pieces, and made ropes from them. The whole wheat dough was very sticky (I think I may have overdone the molasses), and I had to flour my hands to keep the dough from sticking. Here are the ropes I made…notice the varying lengths that result from eyeballing “equal” pieces:

Dough ropes...

Then I took a rope of each colour, braided them, made a round, and pinched the ends together.  This is harder than it sounds.  Here’s what I ended up with:

Braided rounds, ready to rise again...

 

I let them rise for another half hour, and then put them into boiling sugar water for 2 or 3 minutes, flipping them every few seconds. After their bath, they looked like this:

Nice and puffy...ready to be baked...

 

I omitted the flour wash/seeds that Kristin suggested…pure laziness! After 20 minutes in my 350-degree oven (I turned them once), the bagels came out looking like this:

Finished bagels...yummy!

I thought the finished results looked a lot like the dog chews we buy once in a while for Jake! Jim commented on how pretty they were when they were sliced, and took this picture to show you:

Sliced bagel...photo by Jim...

If you like bagels, give these a try!