Lord of the Dough Rings

Today I got up, toasted the bagels I made last night, and slapped salmon, cream cheese, and onion slices on them. My verdict: in need of minor adjustments, but already better than all the bagels I can get nearby, except for a little bit of unwanted flavor.

Also, too small.

I decided to check Wikipedia today, and I learned a few things that could possibly be true in spite of being in Wikipedia.

First of all, no one knows where bagels come from. Something sort of similar to a bagel appears in a Syrian cookbook from the 1200’s, and bagels were brought to the US in their more-or-less current form by Polish Jews. No one knows where the word bagel comes from. There are a lot of theories, and that proves no one knows.

Now the important stuff. Wikipedia says that in 2003, New York bagels sold from carts had an average weight of 170 grams, so my plan to shoot for 125 many need to be changed. Also, some bakers use sugar in the bagel dough instead of barley malt, and the ingredients in the boil water vary.

Knowing human nature as I do, I think it’s pretty likely that a lot of bakers are using sugar in their bagels. It’s cheap. I also think they are using it in their water. This would explain the lack of malt flavor in authentic bagels I’ve eaten in New York and Miami. I don’t think they’re using baking soda in the water, either, because it has a distinctive taste, and I have never noticed it in a factory bagel.

I have read that baking soda has been used in boil water to make the water alkaline so bagels brown better, but as a pizza guy, I am well aware that any dough containing a lot of sugar will brown well. I don’t see why anyone would need baking soda in a sugared dough that is going to brown no matter what you boil it in.

I’m thinking I’ll use a 50/50 mix of sugar and malt in the dough, so I’ll get a little malt flavor, but not a whole lot. And I’ll boil in water that contains only sugar and salt. I’ll increase the dough recipe until it comes in at a multiple of 150 grams, and that will be the pre-baked weight of my bagels.

Yes. I see it all so clearly now.

Wikipedia says New Yorkers claim New York water is essential to making a good bagel. New Yorkers say a lot of incredibly stupid things. They say you can’t make a good pizza without New York water. The pizza in New Haven has a better reputation than New York pizza, so I guess someone built a pipeline. Not. My water will make perfectly good bagels.

My pizza is far better than anything I’ve had in New York. Not “better.” FAR better. My cheesecake is also FAR better than Junior’s.

Incidentally, you can make any kind of water you want. Brewers know this. You can take distilled water and add minerals and whatever you like. All over America and Australia, fat guys who like good beer do this in their garages. You can buy the additives online. If you want New York water, you can make it.

That New York ego is really something.

I wondered why the bagel recipe hadn’t been nailed down and published everywhere, and I may have part of the answer: socialism. New York Jews and socialism have a long history of romantic entwinement, going back at least to the days when the socialist newspaper Forverts was founded. At some point, the bagel masters in New York City created a union to prevent anyone else from making bagels and spreading bagel knowledge. The union was called Bagel Bakers Local 338, and the damage it did to mankind is incalculable.

It’s hard to understand why Jews, who are extremely capable, love socialism, which was created to cripple the capable and divert undeserved money to the incompetent. But then it’s hard to understand why they chose a king over priests and prophets who spoke for the God who did everything for them.

You don’t see the Japanese and the Singaporeans pushing their governments to impoverish them and give their wealth to the lazy and the slow.

Just saying.

A while back, I said I was going to quit working to come up with new recipes, because food is not a healthy obsession, but this is different. I absolutely need bagels with salmon in my diet, and I have to have a reliable supply. If I could drive a mile and buy bagels, I wouldn’t be doing this. I also learned how to make fried Chinese dumplings and Kung Pao chicken. Same reason.

This is like America’s new retaliatory tariffs. I am the victim here, responding to an unfair deprivation. I had bagels, and they were taken from me. I am just restoring order to the universe.

I’m also going to keep working on the proportions. Salmon, cheese, onions. I disagree with the losers and deplorables who only put a little cheese on their bagels. I think you need a nice thick layer. And too much salmon can be distracting. It can drown everything else out.

I have come to prefer Bermuda onions on bagels, and the older I get, the thicker the slices have to be.

I will figure plain bagels out. I will figure garlic bagels out. Then I’ll be done. I can go long periods without blueberry bagels and cinnamon raisin bagels, and they always linger on store shelves, so they’re always available. I am content to pay for them.

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I just yanked 4 bagels out of the oven. Things are looking good.

The size is right. The appearance is right, although more of a B+ than an A. The weight is right. The crusts are shiny and hard. The color is correct.

These started at roughly 155 grams. I waffled around and settled on this weight.

I can smell malt, and it’s a little stronger than I want, but that may be because the boil water is still on the stove.

I’m cooling them on a rack so the bottoms won’t get soggy. This may just work.

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They are pretty cool, so I tried one. The texture is fine. I would say I’m tasting too much salt and malt, though. My wife loves these bagels, but she has some pretty interesting ideas on how to eat Western food.

I’m going to try again tomorrow. I will cut the salt in the dough to 2%, and I will halve the malt and leave the white sugar as it is. I will also halve the salt in the boil and replace all the malt with sugar.

As it is, I have bagels more than adequate for my next round of open-faced smoked fish sammiches.