14th November 2024

I made bagels today for the first time.  I did my usual thing of getting all of my books that had bagel recipes (nowhere near as many as I thought actually), compared all of them, made notes and then decided to follow the advice of Claudia Roden and add an egg to the dough to lighten it.  It was pretty successful but things I learnt were: I did not knead my dough enough so it wasn’t as silky as it needed to be, although this did not affect the bagel itself, it did mean that the overall look of the outside was not as smooth as it should be; my bagels were probably a little too small so next time I will increase the weight from 70g each to 100g each.  They took longer to bake than any of the recipes said but they did eventually come out golden, some with poppy seeds on the top and some with crispy onions.  The crispy onion ones were absolutely my favourite.  I will try to remake again this weekend just to get them right. 

Then a day of no working meant we had time to cook and enjoy the time in the kitchen.  We went Spanish with pan con tomate, paella and a gorgeous arroz con leche and a gorgeous winter spiced sangria. Such a fabulous evening. I could get used to not working.