What are you Baking the week of March 22, 2020

[Joan Simpson]

Nice bagels Chocomouse.

[RiversideLen]

Your bagels look real nice, Chocomouse.

[BakerAunt]

Add me to the admirers of Chocomouse's bagels.

I wonder what a virtual potluck might look like. Or perhaps we should start with a virtual coffee/tea party--the better to show off our baked goods.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Your bagel look great Choco! I am inspired by you and Mike.

I made Stella Park's 100% whole wheat bread yesterday with white whole wheat. At some point when things become more sane I'll try some red too.

It is a nice, fluffy loaf and is as high as the store bought loaves I buy. Good taste but I think I prefer honey to brown sugar that Ms. Park uses. But I will need to try it a few more times before I start changing things.

I allowed the flour and water to sit for the 2.5 hours before mixing in the second addition of wet and dry ingredients. It was a VERY slack dough - almost batter like - after I mixed it in the food processor. It overflowed the bowl and made a mess. Not sure if I can fix this or if I need to reduce the ingredients. The recipe calls for a 14 cup food processor and for some reason 10 is what sticks in my head for ours. It was much wetter than the KAF loaf which felt so dry I needed in some extra water.

I let the first rise go for 2.5 hours and the dough had firmed up some but it was still pretty wet. I shaped it and put it into a loaf pan and let it rise for almost three hour. The long rises are because our kitchen is cold (Ms. Parks time are base on a 70 degree kitchen and ours started at 66 and rose to 68) and also I was playing with my kids and lost track of time. I think the second rise went a little too long. I had the oven heated a bit above 350 then turned it down when the loaf went in. I let it bake for 25 minutes then tented it for another 15. I should have tented it sooner as the top is a little well done. I had a little oven spring too so that helped.

Now we have to see if my kids eat it. I ordered some bread from whole foods and they substituted cinnamon raisin bread without checking. My oldest has been eating turkey sandwiches on raisin bread after I told him it would be like a Thanksgiving dinner sandwich. He will eat anything! Of course he also ran 14 miles in 45 degree rain yesterday so he's hungry.

Thanks for the pointer to the recipe and for convincing me to use the food processor. I'll try this a couple more times before/if I start making changes.

[chocomouse]

Thanks everyone for the compliments on my bagels! It takes a little practice and you have to be focused and shape carefully - no just quickly poking a hole and stretching the dough any which way! This was my 4th batch and I think another 2 inches on the waistline.

It would be a lot of fun to do a virtual potluck!

[Mike Nolan]

I find using good pre-shaping techniques on the balls of dough and then letting them rest for several minutes before trying to poke a hole in the middle works very well. My granddaughter learned both of these skills fairly quickly when she was 10 or 11, and it was really hard to tell the bagels she shaped from the ones I did, and I've done it many times.

Like a lot of baking skills, making bagels isn't hard, but it is a bit precise.

Of course the best part about making cheese bagels is you get to eat the cheese that falls off the bagels after it has been baked into a chip.

[Author]

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