Oh, Bagel…
Now, I do not put baked good selections into the weekly CSB box if I have not thoroughly vetted the formulas. This means I have successfully made the item at least twice and consider it of good enough quality to give it to all my subscribers, for whom I keep the highest standards.
And then came the dastardly bagel…that chimera of my bread world; an inscrutable, devious foe who laughs in my face when I most need him there for me. In all my test batches, he was beautiful, puffy and everything you would expect a bagel to be; I confidently pushed forward and put them as a choice in this week’s box.
And then came Tuesday…
After wrangling with 48 bagels that needed to be refrigerated over night (do you know how much space that takes?), I woke up at 6am, filled my canning pot with the equivalent of a bathtub’s worth of water and waited to boil my bagels. And waited….and waited…and waited…give me a break, its a big pot of water.
Ok, so it was boiling, I dropped my first 4 bagels in and watched as they collapsed. My perfectly shaped and perky donuts caved in on themselves, overwhelmed by the pressure of the boiling water or maybe my expectations. I tried the next batch, same thing…and so it went for the next 4 hours and 44 bagels. Feeling devastated and incredibly embarrassed about having to give these to CSB members, I threw out those I didn’t need and husband coined the term “Looks Aren’t Everything Bagels”. Supportive CSB members even suggested that the taste was so good, perhaps I should say I invented a new type of bread and not worry about the whole bagel designation.
As bagels were on the menu for the next two days of the box, post-CSB drop-off and Ooga bake sale, I went about trouble-shooting. I tweaked here; I amended there and come Wednesday morning, my perky bagels held their shape and were significantly closer to regular bagels. Success! (For those of you interested in what happened, the protein content of my flour was too low and I overfermented my sponge).
So, apologies again to the Tuesday crowd for the Looks for Everything Bagels; you will be receiving a complimentary set of bagels next week. To everyone else, did you like the bagels? How about the baguettes and brownies?
UPDATE: Regardless of how that first batch of bagels came out, I had at least one fan. This is one subscriber’s son enjoying the flattened bagel; I really couldn’t ask for any more validation that this.
