The bake

I’ve wanted to try making bagels for a while. But, for some reason, I was intimidated. I guess I thought they were complicated. I built up the courage and told my boyfriend I was going to try. He was also interested, so it become a Saturday afternoon project.

It turns out bagels aren’t that difficult to make! We used a recipe from King Arthur Baking Company. Since this was my first time making bagels, I can’t compare to other recipes, but I think the trick to a good bagel is using bread flour (not all-purpose) and kneading the dough long enough to give it that chewy texture. We topped the entire dozen with poppyseeds, but the recipe is for plain bagels with some tips if you want to try variations.

The one part of the process that gave us some trouble was rolling the dough into “smooth” balls. We did our best, but they weren’t totally smooth, meaning the shapes of the bagels were less than perfect. But does it matter how a bagel looks if it tastes as good as these ones did? We didn’t think so.

My one complaint was that some of the bagels stuck to one of the two pans. So next time, I’ll try with greased parchment paper instead of just greased pans.

The book

I’m halfway through Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber. The book is divided into seven sections–sort of a novel and sort of a collection of linked stories. It opens with New York lawyer Ethan learning that his father has a second family and has been living with this secret for years. This first story is told from Ethan’s perspective, and the subsequent sections in the book are first-person accounts from different characters connected to this. (Or at least that’s how it’s been so far. I’m in the fourth section.) I seem to have a thing for linked stories. I like getting an inside look from various perspectives on the same events. So far, I wouldn’t say the book has been “unputdownable,” but I am quite enjoying it.