Temat: בײגל פון קראקע Bajgiel Krakowski

In another thread I provided a recipe for cholent that my grandma Miriam used to cook. I also recommended to eat it with bagel. In the current thread I will provide a recipe how to bake the real Krakowian bagel.

First, few clarifications.

A round bread bun with a hole in it exists in many places in the world in slight variations: the Turkish simit, the Arabic ka'ak, the Finnish Vesirinkeli, the Russian sushki, and of course the Polish obwarzanek. Like bagel most of these bread buns are also boiled in water prior to baking. So, what makes bagel different?

This question is indeed often asked by Polish (for example here and here). Actually, bagel should be a source of pride for the Krakowians, since it originates from Kazimierz.




Obwarzanek




Bagel

I think that bagel has a unique combination of several properties, and although each of these properties individually is maybe shared with similar bread buns, all of them combined together are specific only to bagel: distinctive (slightly honey-sweetish) taste, chewy (almost rubbery) texture, and shiny (even glossy) appearance.

These properties are the result of a rather complex baking procedure.

Assuming that you are familiar with how obwarzanek is made, the following are the major differences when comparing a bagel recipe to obwarzanek:
(1) Long - very long (ate least 12 hours!) - proofing using a dough retarder,
(2) Bagels are boiled in honey water (with loads of honey),
(3) No proofing is applied after the bagels are formed and they are immediately boiled in water.

An additional difference is that bagels are formed from a flattened dough ball by inserting thumbs in the middle of it to open a hole (and NOT by rolling a cylinder and sticking together the ends)!Nahum Korda edytował(a) ten post dnia 02.10.10 o godzinie 22:37

Temat: בײגל פון קראקע Bajgiel Krakowski

For baking about 12 bagels you will need the following ingredients:

6-8 cups of high gluten flour
Do not use flour called "tortowa". This is an excellent flour for cakes, but not for bread. It has about 10-11% of protein. For bread you need a flower with a high amount of proteins - 14% and more.
If you are baking bagel for cholent, I recommend the high fiber flour like this. It has 14.1% of protein and 6.7% of fiber, which both makes an excellent bread and accelerates digestion of cholent.

3 cups of lukewarm water

1 tablespoon of sugar

1 teaspoon of sea salt

1 package of fresh yeast (you can actually make it also with only 1/2 of it)

1/2 cup of olive oil

2 eggs

In addition you will also need about 3 liters of water and 300g of honey to boil bagel before baking, and an additional egg and some poppy seeds to coat bagel before baking.

You will also need a container that is large enough to allow about a kilogram of dough to rise (the dough could even triple in size), but small enough to fit into your refrigerator.

Here is how to start preparing the dough:

Pour the lukewarm water into a large bowl. The temperature of water must be below 40C (otherwise the yeast dies), but above 30C (otherwise it will take too long to activate it). Add to the water sugar and salt and stir it until they completely dissolve. Crumble fresh yeast into the water and stir it again until it dissolves. Be gentle with yeast - stir it delicately. Add half a cup of flower while stirring it into a homogeneous mixture. Leave it for up to 10 minutes.

Add 5 and a half cups of flower to the mixing bowl (the larger the better). With your fingers form a hole in the middle.

The mixture with yeast should start bubbling almost immediately. In 10 minutes or less it should become a foam double in size from the original quantity. If it doesn't - something is wrong with the yeast, and you need to start from the beginning. If it doubles in size faster (it usually does) do not wait longer, and continue preparing the dough.

Crack 2 eggs into a small bowl. Inspect them to ensure that no broken shells are there. If cooking kosher, inspect that no blood stains are in the eggs. Otherwise, bagel will not be parve.

Pour the eggs into the hole that you formed in the middle of the flour. Pour half a cup of olive oil into the hole. Pour the foamy yeast mixture on top of it an start kneading it.

Kneading the dough is a technique that is easy to learn. But it is noisy! The dough must be repeatedly smashed onto a table until the physical mixing of the components is complete (this is when the dough ceases to be sticky).

Here is a video that demonstrates this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvdtUR-XTG0

Here is another video that is better explained, but cannot be embedded (the dough in it is of a different kind, but the kneading technique is identical):
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/video/2008/03/bertinet....Nahum Korda edytował(a) ten post dnia 03.10.10 o godzinie 14:25

Temat: בײגל פון קראקע Bajgiel Krakowski

When the dough is completely smooth leave it covered for an hour an a half in a warm place (20-25C). During that period it should double in size at least. Do not leave it any longer, because it may dry out.

After an hour and a half take the dough out of the mixing bowl and put it onto a lightly floured surface. Push all air out of it, fold it, and then push again several times. Form the dough into a ball. Lightly oil the mixing bowl. Place the dough ball into it, and turn it around so that the entire dough surface gets lightly oiled. Wrap the oiled ball into a plastic sheet, but do not seal the sheet, since the dough will rise again. Place it inside the mixing bowl, cover it with a towel, and place it into a refrigerator for at least 12 hours.

What you are doing is called proofing. It is a process of allowing the yeast to decompose carbohydrates in the flour, which results in the carbon dioxide (a gas that makes the dough rise) and the alcohols. The alcohols will give bread the characteristic flavor. However, they will completely evaporate during the baking, leaving only the flavor behind.

The refrigerator serves as the retarder which slows the process. Proofing retarders are used extensively for the sourdough breads, but with a different purpose. In bagel, what you need to achieve with the retarded proofing is the chewy, almost rubbery structure of the dough. You do not want the dough to ferment quickly, resulting in an airy and crispy bread like the french baguette. This is why a long, slow fermentation is a necessity for the bagels.

The challenge is to prevent drying out of the dough in the refrigerator. Beware: modern refrigerators dry the dough faster than if left outside in the room temperature. In addition to covering the dough with a plastic sheet you may need to oil it several times during those 12 hours, or even spray it with cold water.

In the next posting, I shall explain how to boil the bagels without causing them to get flat (which is one of the typical complaints from many who tried to bake bagel at home).

Temat: בײגל פון קראקע Bajgiel Krakowski

Many who try to bake bagel complain that their dough collapsed when boiled. For example here: "no i niestety wyszly, jakby ktos na nich usiadl :/". Or here: "Witam! Robiłam już dwa razy bajgle i za każdym razem podczas wkładania do wody kurczą się i marszczą, i podczas pieczenia nie wracają do swojej pierwotnej okrągłości! Co robię źle???"

The reason is actually very simple, and it is very easy to avoid that. The trick is simply in timing! - I shall explain it below.

Continue cooking only after at least 12 hours of proofing the dough in a refrigerator.

Take a flat pot or (preferably) a big frying pan, and fill it with some 3 liters of water. Add 300 grams of honey to it, and bring it to boil. Make sure that the water is boiling before dropping bagels into it.

Preheat the oven. Oven should be ready before starting to boil bagels.

In parallel, take the mixing bowl out of the refrigerator, take the dough out of the mixing bowl and put it onto a lightly floured surface. Push all air out of it, fold it, and then push again several times, until it is completely flat. Do not let the dough warm up. Work it out immediately when you take it out of the refrigerator.

Form a cylinder about 4 cm in diameter from the dough. Cut it into discs about 2 cm wide. Form a ball from every disc. The balls should be small enough to fit into your hand palm and completely smooth. Flatten each ball and with your thumbs make a hole in the middle. With fingers smoothen the inside edges and form a radially symmetric ring.

I recommend to invest some effort into smoothening the dough and into forming close-to-perfect rings. Every fold that you leave in the dough, every imperfection in it will grow when you boil bagel, and become visible. If you want perfect bagel, put some effort into their geometry now.

As soon as you are satisfied with the form of a bagel, drop it carefully into the boiling water. Do not leave the dough to rise!

This is what I mean when saying that the trick is in timing. The best is to drop bagel into the boiling water while the dough is still cold from the refrigerator. As soon as the dough gets into the boiling water, it will rise quickly, forming a perfect bagel.

The problem occurs if you let the dough rise before you drop it into the boiling water. Then the gasses accumulated in the dough suddenly expand in the heat. As the result of this expansion bagel pops and holes are created in its surface. All gasses escape through these holes, leaving flat bagels - "jakby ktos na nich usiadl".

To avoid this, simply do not allow dough to rise after you took it out of the refrigerator. - Work out quickly the cold dough and get it into the boiling water while still cold. If necessary, ask somebody to help you at this stage.

When you drop a bagel into the boiling water you heat up the dough quickly. At the temperature of boiling water the yeast on the dough dies, and after boiling bagels will not rise again. However, this heating up is not immediate everywhere. While the surface of the bagel is immediately heated up, the inside of the bagel is getting only gradually warmed up. As the temperature inside a bagel rises, the yeast becomes quickly active, producing gases and bloating the bagel to its final form. Nevertheless, soon the temperature gets too hot for the yeast even inside the bagel, and the process is terminated before the bagel pops.

Boil every bagel one minute on each side. Boiling the dough after a long retarded proofing will give bagel its chewy consistency. Honey is added to the water in order to coat bagel. This will give it its shiny surface, as well as slightly sweetish taste.

Take bagels out of the boiling water and quickly dry them in the air. Do not leave them in the air too long before baking them. Brush bagels with a beaten egg and sprinkle them with poppy seeds.

Put bagels into the preheated oven, and bake them until brown.









Nahum Korda edytował(a) ten post dnia 13.10.10 o godzinie 02:10

Temat: בײגל פון קראקע Bajgiel Krakowski

They looks so tasty. I'll try them with my mom :)