Sour Dough Bagels

This is where it all began. Well, only my recent sour dough obsession. At the food conference this past winter I took a sour dough bagel making class the last day (right before I learned how to prune fruit trees... what a cool conference!). I got a starter from a woman from the bay area who told us that this starter was in fact the San Francisco sour dough starter- something about lactobacillus sanfracacensus... or something.

Sour dough rises bread dough with a mixture of yeasts and bacteria (they both eat sugars and produce gas. The sour flavor comes about because the bacteria also produces stuff like lactic acid and acids are sour). While it is possible to make your own sour dough starter, I had tried this in the past and never got a particularly active one. The one this woman gave us was amazing and it is so strong and fast and I love working with it!

I've gotten quite good at making bagels, so I decided to sign up to make them for our final class in Community Food Planning (if I can figure out how to load attachments, maybe I'll give you all access to our urban agricultural assessment guide to Boston). People in the class loved them. I'm glad I got so much positive reinforcement, because it being finals time, I've been totally overwhelmed and lost some sleep in order to make these. But it was worth it. My room mate Kate came down in the night after I finished baking them. The two of us were in heaven. Crispy outside. Chewy inside. Sour/sweet/balanced amazingness of a flavor (maybe someday I'll take a class in food writing...).

For the recipe:
4 c organic whole wheat bread flour
2 1/3 c lukewarm water
1 1/2 c starter*
1 T sea salt
1/3 c veg. oil
1/3 c maple syrup or barley malt syrup (I've used both; this past time I used barley malt- it's not as sweet)

*you refresh you starter twice for this- start 16 hours before you make bagels and feed it once. Then 8 hours before hand take a T of that starter (discard the rest) and mix it with 2 c flour and 1 c water. Half of this is used in the recipe, half is saved in the fridge.

Process:

1. Mix the flour and the water with your starter in a bowl (not metal) and let it rest for 30 minutes (it's super gooey).
2. Add the sea salt and mix it thoroughly (2 min). Add the oil and the syrup and mix for another 5 minutes (super gooey!). Let the dough rest for 20 minutes.
3. After a rest, begin to knead the dough by turning it 20 times and then letting it rest again for 20 minutes. Do this cycle of kneading and resting an additional 5 times (though sometimes I do less if the dough seems particularly active or if I'm low on time...).
4. Portion the dough into 12 pieces and shape them into rounds to let rise 1 hour.
5. Boil a pot of water and preheat oven to 425ºF. Poke a hole in the rounds (bagel means bracelet, but you don't need to have a hole quite as big to fit around your wrist... but you could). Place the bagels in the boiling water (rolling boil is important- at high altitudes add salt to get to a higher temperature). The bagels will float- cook them for 1 or 2 minutes on each side. Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a clean cookie sheet.
6. Prepare a second cookie sheet with parchment paper for the baking. When the bagels are cool enough to be handled, dip them in a plate of seeds and then put on your parchment paper cookie sheet (or on a preheated baking stone). Cook the bagels for 20-25 minutes. Check on them to make sure they're browning evenly.

mmmm.... enjoy! (Goat Chevre is really good on these!)