Today's Bagel is Brought to You By the Letter C

Baking is so much different than cooking. With cooking, you can pretty much throw anything into a pot, let it simmer, taste it now and again, maybe with a glass of wine or two, and adjust the seasoning as you go along. With baking, you really need to focus on technique, and precise measurements.

Yesterday I made the dough for baking some bagels this morning. Reinhart suggests the following steps:

• Mix the dough
• Let rise
• Shape into bagels
• Proof
• Retard in the refrigerator
• Just before baking, bring them up to room temperature
• Boil
• Bake

Sounds pretty simple. However, I did it differently. Given that I needed to get out of bed at 3:30 to get them baked in time for work, I elected to leave the dough at a cool room temperature (about 65 degrees) for the night. So, basically, I've let the dough proof quite a bit before shaping them into bagels early this morning.

First off, the bagels are cinnamon raisin with walnuts. My sister likes walnuts in her bagels. (She isn't anywhere around here, so what difference that makes, I'm not sure...) As a result of the overnight proof, the dough was quite soft. My attempt to roll the dough into a "snake" was an issue because the walnuts and raisins created holes and cavities in the dough. As a result, I basically squeezed them into shape. The wrap-around-the-hand-and-roll-together step wouldn't work. So, again, the ends sort of got squeezed together.

During the boiling and baking process, half of the bagels separated at the seam, forming the letter C as a result.

I'm reasonably confident they will taste OK. But next time, I might actually follow the directions.