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In his recent thread, Bagels From BBA, David (dmsnyder) responded affirmatively to my offer to post my sourdough bagel recipe. I’m very pleased to be able to repay him, just a little, for the many fantastic bread recipes of his I have baked over the past months. So here’s the recipe, and hope you like these bagels as much as I do, David!

Acknowledgements: I think the original source was a bagel recipe posted on Dan Lepard’s forum, but adapted for sourdough and re-posted on the Sourdough Companion forum.  Unfortunately, I have so far been unable to retrace my steps to the post in question. Once I do locate it, I’ll post the URL here.

I have been baking these bagels just about weekly for the best part of a year, and during this time have made multiple small tweaks to arrive at the recipe I am about to post.

I have to admit to being a sourdough nut, and probably biased towards sourdough as a leavening agent, but I do take the point that some types of bakery products are not ideally suited to sourdough and turn out better with dry yeast. That bias acknowledged, my firm opinion is that this sourdough bagel recipe yields better flavour – actually, an all-round better bagel - than I have encountered in any commercially yeasted version (and I speak as a committed bagel consumer from way back, not just as a home baker). 

What does ‘better’ mean? Well, for me, a lovely caramelised thin shell of a crust that crackles a little when you bite into it, and a crumb that is tightish and firm, as it should be, yet not dry – and of course, full flavoured and delicious. (I like a touch of rye nestled in amongst the flavours, so often use a starter with 30% rye/70% white flour.)

These babies are best fresh, but toast up well the day after baking, and work beautifully with butter and honey (and a nice cup of good leaf tea brewed for 4 minutes!), as well as the more traditional savoury toppings.

I usually make only 6 bagels per bake, as my partner and I prefer to have them fresh as a once weekly treat, rather than freezing any that are not consumed on the day of the bake or toasted the next day. I suspect others might prefer to make more in one batch, so the following recipe is for a dozen bagels.

Ingredients

• 400g starter* (100% hydration)
• 150g filtered water
• 550g flour (plain flour if you’re in Australia, AP in the US)
• 38g oil (I use non-GM canola oil)
• 25g malt extract (I think this is referred to as malt syrup in the States?)
• 10-12g salt (15g if you are not used to lower salt doughs)

*As mentioned, I like a suggestion of rye in the flavour, so I use 30% whole grain organic rye and 70% organic white plain flour in my bagel starter. However, I’ve quite often used an all-white flour starter, and the end result is just as good.

Method

• Hand-mix all ingredients in bowl.  Will be quite a dry dough, but persist in mixing for a few minutes and only add a little extra water if the dough won’t come together. No need to rest the dough once mixed.
• Do a couple of short kneads (say, 2 or 3 minutes) at 10 minute intervals. Use conventional-style kneading: this dough is too stiff for stretching and folding. Leave to rise for 3-4 hours.
• Divide into 12 equally weighted portions, and pre-shape into balls. Flatten them a bit, then poke a hole in the middle with a skewer and work it around until you can use your finger to take over and create a bagel-sized hole (I prefer to keep the hole small so toppings don’t fall through, but I take full responsibility for this idiosyncrasy and don’t expect anyone else to take it on!).
• As you complete each bagel, place it in a lightly oiled container large enough to allow the batch to sit there shoulder to shoulder, so to speak. Rub both sides of bagel on the oiled container surface to coat lightly with oil. Put ‘good side’ up.
• Retard overnight in fridge (cover bagels with plastic, and put entire container in a plastic bag)
• Preheat oven to 215C (420F). Fan off if you have a convection oven.
• While oven heats up, bring about three or four inches of water to boil in a large pot, then add a couple of good dessertspoonfuls of malt extract and stir it in to dissolve. The colour of the boiling liquid should resemble weak tea (unmilked, of course!).
• When oven is ready, plop into the pot as many bagels as will fit in the boiling malty water without piggy-backing on each other – I manage 3. Flip after 30 secs (so, each bagel gets a malt bath of 1 minute in total). Drain on cake rack or similar for a few minutes.
• Line a baking tray with baking paper (‘parchment paper’ in the States, I believe) and sprinkle lightly with semolina.
• Sprinkle on toppings – sesame or poppy seeds or whatever – if you want. (I prefer my bagels plain). Transfer bagels to baking tray, and put in oven.
• Bake @ 215C (420F) for 18 mins. I don’t use steam for these bagels.
• Let your bagels cool for 30 minutes or so before topping and attacking them.



Yeah, I know - I said I make the holes small!

 



Whoops - this hole has closed up completely.

 



 

Sans hole, too - but this is the best crumb shot (despite the camera angle warping the shape of the bagel), so it stays in. My photographic standards are low.

 

Cheers all, and best of bageling to you!
Ross

To continue on my last post, I experimented the gentle S&F technique on this classic recipe from Hamelman's Bread, page 164.  

                                                                      © Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread

There is nothing new about this technique - the slow and gentle (and at the same time, firm and assertive) stretch and folds on the dough over the entire length of time of the bulk fermentation to try to build up its strength, slowly but steadily.  Whether or not we have consciously applied this technique is another issue. 

My purpose was to develop dough strength slowly along side dough fermentation, so as to see how much volume I could get for my loaf and how open the crumb structure could be on this classic recipe.   Here is my Miche, Pointe-à-Callière:

I followed Hamelman's list of ingredients but I did not use his procedure.   My ingredients were:

• 289 g just ripe 60%-hydration levain (40% baker's percentage)
• 725 g high-extraction whole-wheat flour (as suggested by Hamelman, 86% whole wheat flour and 14% plain flour were substituted for the high-extraction flour, which is not available in my area)
• 634 g water
• 17 g salt

Total dough weight was 1,665 g and overall dough hydration was 84%.

My procedure:

Mix only the flour and water.  Autolyse for an hour.  Then, mix in the levain and the salt.  Up to this point, the procedure was as instructed by Hamelman; thereafter I broke away from Hamelman's instruction and started my experiment as follows: 

1. 0:00  When all the ingredients are combined, do the first set of stretch and folds of 35 strokes.  Dab some oil on the edge and bottom of the dough all round where the dough meets the bowl (so that the dough doesn't stick to the bowl when you do the next set of S&F's).
2. 0:30  2nd set of S&F of 25 strokes.  Again, dab some oil on the edge and bottom of the dough as above.
3. 1:00  3rd set of S&F of 25 strokes.  (My dough already felt silky and smooth.)  Again, dab some oil on the edge and bottom of the dough as above).
4. 1:30  4th set of S&F of 25 strokes.  (My dough felt very bouncy and left the side of the mixing bowl in a cohesive whole.  With each stroke, the dough felt stronger.)  Dab some oil on the edge and bottom of the dough as above.
5. 2:00  5th set of S&F of 25 strokes.  (The gluten had developed very nicely.)  Dab some oil on the edge and bottom of the dough as above.  Sprinkle ample flour on the work bench.
6. 2:30  6th set of S&F of 25 strokes and, at the end of the last stroke, grab the whole dough and lift it out of the bowl in one swift movement and drop the dough on the floured surface (what was at the bottom of the mixing bowl is now against the floured surface and it is the right side).  Cover the dough with the mixing bowl.
7. 3:00  1st pre-shaping.  Gather the edges to the centre, turn it over (so the right side is now up), and tighten it.  Cover.
8. 3:10  2nd pre-shaping.  (As my dough was a bit wobbly and extended out a lot as it rested, I decided to do a 2nd pre-shaping.  You don't have to if your dough doesn't need it ).  Turn the dough over so the right side is now down, gather the edges to the centre, turn it over to tighten it.  Cover.
9. 3:20  shape it into a boule.  I placed the boule on a dusted kitchen towel.  Cover and place it in a plastic bag.
10. 3:30  place the dough in the fridge for retarding.  (Total fermentation time was 3 1/2 hours for me at room temperature of 26 - 27C.  Adjust your fermentation time if your room temperature differs.)
11. Retarding in the refrigerator for 12 hours.
12. Bake as normal.

Verdict:  There appears to be more volume in my bread compared to Hamelman's bread (first picture above).  With a dough hydration of 84% (even allowing for the type of flour used for this formula), you would expect the bread profile to be somewhat flat, as seen in Hamelman's bread above.  However, the stretch and fold regime as outlined above in my procedure seems to have developed the gluten structure very nicely and, as a result, my bread seems to have more volume than Hamelman's bread.   

What this tells me is that for a high hydration dough, a slow and steady gluten development is better than a one-shot 2 1/2 minutes or 4 minutes (or whatever it is) kneading in the machine with just one or two sets of S&F's.  For a low hydration dough, you don't need to worry about the dough strength; it develops easily anyway.   Next time if I am doing a high hydration dough again, I will definitely give this method another try.

Shiao-Ping 

I've been threatening to collapse my San Francisco starter and call it a day because it performs much slower than my other starters.  At the last minute, David (dmsnyder) brought to my attention James MacGuire's other recipe, Miche, Pointe-a-Calliere in Hamelman's "Bread," as well as Pain Poilane in Daniel Leader's "Local Breads."  The full title of the latter is "Whole Wheat Sourdough Miche inspried by Pain Poilane, pain au levain complet," and according to Daniel Leader, it is "a symbol of artisanal excellence in France and around the world."  David also mentioned Peter Reinhart's Poilane-Style Miche in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice."  

As all three formulae employ a whole wheat starter (to be exact, the flours used for the starters and the final doughs are, respectively, high-extraction whole-wheat flour in Hamelman's book, stone-ground whole wheat flour in Leader's book, and a sifted medium-grind whole wheat flour in Reinhart's book), I thought I'd convert my San Francisco starter into an Australian wholemeal starter first before I decide on an avenue to pursue.  I have been warned that my Australian wholemeal flour is actually white whole wheat flour for North America.  All the better for my endeavour here as the standard whole wheat flour is hard red spring wheat which may not be the most desirable flour for hearth loaves.   

Formula Synopsis Comparison     

* There is a discrepancy in figures in Leader's book (page 120); the instruction says leveain of 125 g (25%) is to be used however the table lists a figure of 225 g (45%); hence, the resulting difference in final dough sizes. 

Just by looking at the comparison above, I immediately know that I would like the Hamelman's (ie, James MacGuire's) formula the best.  However, I have a very basic problem here that I cannot reconcile with intellectually.  In Hamelman's book, it specifically says to make the final levain build 12 hours (@ 70F) before the dough mix, and also in Leader's book, it is 8 - 12 hours (@70 - 75F).   My problem is: if final levain build takes 12 hours, why, then, would the dough fermentation (bulk & final proofing all-up) only take half that time?  (Note: in both cases, dough fermenting temperature is recommended roughly the same as the starter temperature.)   There seems to be the pressumption that if your starter is very strong (after 8 - 12 hours' final building), it should be able to leaven dough many times its size with half the time (at roughly the same temperature).   From past experience, I already know what my sourdough would look like if I followed the instruction to the letter.

Anyway, I didn't want to go there.  I decided I wanted to do something bold - no harm, it's only an experiment:

• 85% dough hydration: my thinking is if white flour can take 80% hydration, wholemeal can take 85%!
• 12 hours all-up for bulk fermentation and final proofing: my rationale is my San Francisco starter performs very slowly and the Australian mild winter gives me 70 - 75F room temperature, the ideal temp for the fermenting dough.

My Formula

• 220 g Australian white wholemeal starter @ 75% hydration
• 414 g Australian white wholemeal flour
• 365 g water
• 10 g salt

 You cannot get ingredients more simple than the above list of 4 items!

Main points of my steps are:

1. 4 & 1/2 hours of bulk fermentation (@ 70 - 75F ) during which 5 sets of 8 - 10 folds were performed, the last set of which also served as pre-shaping as in my Pain de Tradition post.
2. Then, shaped the dough into a boule and placed it in a basket line with floured towel.
3. 7 & 1/2 hours of proofing  (@ 70 - 75F).  For the whole time, I checked it every 15 minutes or so to make sure it's not over-proofed. 
4. When I checked it the last time before I put it into the fridge for the night (for 7 hours) with a floured finger, the dough still sprang back with some "force."
5. This morning, I brought it out of the fridge, let it sit at room temp for 4 hours! before I baked it. 

And here is this little baby,

    100% Sourdough Pain de Tradition with 85% Hydration (100% Australian wholemeal flour)

                                  the crumb

          and more crumb

Throughout the whole time I was aware that over-fermenting/proofing would mean:

• no oven spring
• the dough may collapse
• the crust may be baked to a ghostly pale color
• the crumb may taste like glue
• the taste may be overly sour

In this sourdough,

• there was a good oven spring
• the dough held up really well, with no "bread improver" of any sort
• the crust color was perfect to my liking
• the crumb tastes mildly chewy and springy
• there is an assertive sourness, but not excessive.

In fact, the formula and the steps here yielded a complex crumb flavor, far more than the humble ingredients list would have you believed.

Morale (if there is such a thing):  What I learned in this bake is that I have to know my starter to do sourdough well.   As Dan Lepard said,

... a ... baker recognizes that the doughs he makes are living things with individual identities, that they ultimately create themselves.  The baker's skill is to encourage natural developments, and the bread that results from this understanding will always taste better....

If I simply follow recipes without understanding my starter, my dough, and my environment (I mean, the environment the starter and the dough is in), no recipe can guarantee any good sourdough. 

It's near bed time as I was signing off.  My son danced out of his bedroom and asked, "Come on, mum, where is the music?"

Shiao-Ping

Last week, I baked Susan from San Diego's “Original Sourdough.” My description can be found at:

http://tfl.thefreshloaf.com/node/11321/susan-san-diego039s-quotoriginal-sourdoughquot

Susan also shared her formula for her “Ultimate Sourdough,” which has replaced the “Original Sourdough” as her personal favorite, I gather. The “Original Sourdough” was so good, it was hard to imagine a bread that would outdo it, and I was tempted to just make it again. But I thought the other deserved a try. So, this week, I baked Susan's “Ultimate Sourdough” - again, with some variations I will describe.

Susan's formula for her “Ultimate Sourdough” is described in her blog, here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/6927/well-i-finally-did-it

Susan's formula makes “one small boule.” I doubled the recipe. I wanted to make two boules, one to bake after overnight cold retardation, as I did with the “Original Sourdough.” I also added a bit more WW flour than Susan called for and used a different mixing and fermentation approach.

Procedures

1. I dissolved the starter in the water in a large bowl.

2. Both flours were added to the water and mixed thoroughly.

3. The bowl was covered tightly and the dough was allowed to rest (autolyse) for 60 minutes.

4. The salt was then added and folded into the dough using a flexible dough scraper.

5. After a 20 minutes rest, the dough was stretched and folded in the bowl for 20 strokes. This was repeated twice more at 20 minute intervals.

6. The dough was then transferred to a lightly oiled 2 liter glass measuring “cup” with a tightly fitting plastic cover and allowed to ferment, undisturbed, until doubled. (10 hours, overnight).

7. The next morning, the dough was very soft, puffy and full of bubbles. I divided it into two equal pieces, gently rounded them, and allowed them to rest for 10 minutes.

8. The pieces were then formed into boules and placed in well-floured coiled reed brotforms, each of which was then placed in a food-grade plastic bag.

9. At this point, one loaf was allowed to proof on the bench, and the other was placed in the refrigerator to retard until the next day.

10. The first loaf was allowed to expand by about 75% (3 hours).

11. The oven was preheated to 500F, with a baking stone in place for1 hour.

12. The loaf was transferred to a peel dusted with semolina, transferred to the baking stone and covered with a stainless steel bowl preheated with hot tap water. The oven was turned down to 460F.

13. After 15 minutes, the bowl was removed. The loaf was baked for another 10 minutes, then left in the turned-off oven with the door ajar for another 5 minutes to dry the crust.

The retarded loaf was baked the next day. It was allowed to proof in a warm (75F) place for 4 hours. It was baked covered for 12 minutes, then another 15 minutes uncovered. It rested in the turned off oven for 10 minutes.

Susan's Ultimate Sourdough (Not retarded)

Susan's Ultimate Sourdough (Not retarded) - Crumb

Susan's Ultimate Sourdough (Retarded)

Susan's Ultimate Sourdough (Retarded) -Crumb

The boule that was baked without retardation was very similar in taste to the one I had made using Susan's “Original Soudough” formula. It had a nice flavor and was mildly sour. The sourness increased the next day, as expected. The crust was relatively thin but crunchy the first day and chewy the second day.

The boule that was retarded had a lot less oven spring. I think it was proofed more fully than the other had been. It was a bit more sour than the un-retarded loaf, as expected, but less sour than the “Original Sourdough” retarded loaf was. Tasted 5 hours after baking, the whole wheat flavor was coming through. I expect this to mellow out by tomorrow.

Bottom line: Both of Susan's sourdoughs are wonderful. I can't say I prefer one over the other after making each once. I expect I'll be making both regularly.

Thanks again, Susan!

David