Yet more bagels
As you may have guessed, bagels are a mainstay of my bread making repetoire. I normally use an all sour dough recipe, but as a change, decided on a commercial yeast based recipe from the Bread Baker’s Apprentice book. Alas, it was not a great success.
The dough itself was wetter than I’m used to in my normal method. Also, it was proved at room temperature for an hour or so, then should have been retarded in the fridge overnight. Mine was looking so puffed up that I retrieved it earlier as I feared it would over-prove. It was so floppy, it was almost impossible to move from the baking sheets to the poaching water, so, in desperation, I stuck it in the freezer for around 20 minutes, which helped with the moving.
I will double check the hydration, but can’t quite understand why you’d prove it for so much longer, at similar temperatures, than the wild yeast variant? Maybe it’s meant to be more aerated? I don’t know. Whatever, I’ll stick to the wild yeast recipe in future as it’s pretty much bomb proof, and I prefer the end results.
