"The wife is like the fire, or to put things in their proper proportion, the fire is like the wife.
Like the fire, the woman is expected to cook: not to excel in cooking, but to cook,

.... be a cook, but not a competitive cook,

a school mistress, but not a competitive schoolmistress; a house-decorator but not a competitive house-decorator, etc...
She should have not one trade but twenty hobbies; she... may develop all her second bests.


Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow;
on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad.
"

G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World?

February 22, 2014

Whole Wheat Bagels

This recipe is from the Bread Beckers Recipe Collection.



This recipe uses freshly milled hard white wheat berries. My children have always liked store bought bagels but I stopped buying them a while ago. When I broke these homemade ones out one morning as a surprise, my kids were all so thrilled to have bagels again that none of them noticed the change to "whole wheat." I'm glad they were a hit.  (The cream cheese helped I think. :)



Whole Wheat Bagels


2 1/4 cup warm water
2 Tbs honey
2 1/4 tsp salt
5 cups freshly milled wheat flour (hard white)
1 Tbs. gluten (optional)*
2 tsp instant yeast

Combine water, honey, and salt. Add half the flour, yeast, and gluten and mix well.
Add remaining flour and knead to form a slightly stiff dough (about 8-10 minutes). Let rise until double, covering to keep don't from drying out.

Divide the risen dough into twelve pieces and shape into balls and allow to rest. In a large pot bring one gallon of water to a boil then add 1/3 cup honey to it. Working with only six balls at a time, take each ball and poke your thumb through the middle forming a hole, twirling each new bagel on your thumb to enlarge the hole until the hole is about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Let each bagel rest about five minutes, then place it in the boiling honey water. Cook two to three bagels at a time, adjusting the heat so the water is simmering all the time. While these cook, prepare your next six balls for the water. The bagels should sink, then rise in a few seconds; if they don't, they rested too long but are still fine. Just turn them over so that the both sides get wet. After one minute in the water remove with a slotted spoon and place on a greased cookie sheet.

Bake at once in a preheated oven at 425° for about 35 minutes. The bagels may be brushed with a mixture of 1 beaten egg and 2 tablespoons water then sprinkled with sesame seeds, poppy seeds, minced onions, or minced garlic before baking. The egg wash makes even ungarnished bagels shiny and pretty.


(* I didn't add the optional gluten into mine.)

2 comments:

Jane said...

Thanks for the sample one :-)!

Jane said...

My Bread Beckers recipe book will arrive any day. Yeah!