Bagels

For 8 bagels:

Prepare the dough however is most familiar to you.  I put the water in a mixing bowl, sprinkle the yeast, let it sit for a couple of minutes to absorb water, then add the all purpose flour, mix with a dough hook for a few minutes, and finally add the semolina and salt and knead with the dough hook until it has formed up into a ball (kind of). 

Cover the bowl (or put the dough in a covered bowl if you did the knead by hand). Let the dough rise for an hour, take the dough out and fold it several times to stretch it. Let it rise for another hour and fold it again. Because I want to make bagels in the morning as early as practical, I do all this prep the night before. Then I leave the dough to rise overnight. It's going to double or triple in volume overnight, so make sure the bowl is big enough. You could probably go straight to the bagel making after the second fold.

In the morning the first thing is to get water boiling in a large pot.  You need about 3 inches of water in the pot. Also preheat the oven (hopefully with a baking stone) to 450 degrees.

Remove the dough from the bowl and fold it as needed to get dough in a compact form. It doesn't need to be a tight ball at this point, just make it a little more manageable. 

To form a bagel, cut off about 100 grams of dough. I weigh it on a scale placing it in a bowl with flour to flour the bottom side a little. flatten it somewhat into a disk that is about 3 inches across and 1/2 inch thick.  This start is just to make things easy and no precision is needed. Turning the disk, fold all sides into the middle. You're getting close to making a ball, but with a depression in the middle. 

Now pick up the dough and roll the edges of the disk in toward the drepression in the middle.  You are working to form a donut shape.  As you roll the dough in you will be pulling dough out of the middle of the disk which will become thinner and thinner.  After a bit, the middle will tear and you will achieve a bagel shape.  You may want to stretch it out a little.  in this shaping process the tendency is to have the hole not be large enough, so go for a little bigger hole instead of a little smaller. The bagel shape will not be perfectly smooth, don't worry about it.

Importantly, this is NOT the classic way to form a bagel. While I have been trained on the classic roll, it hasn't worked that well for me. As a new bagel maker, you might do better to try the classic, which you can see on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymtIUhkbN6o

When you have four bagels formed, put them into the boiling water.  They will sink, and will probably stick to the bottom. Using a spoon or spatula or whatever, gently free them from the bottom.  By the time you have put all four in and released them from the bottom, they will be floating.  Let them boil for 2 minutes, flip them and let them boil for another 2 minutes.  Take them out of the boiling water and put them on a tray or counter.  After they have given off steam for a couple of minutes, flip them over to allow the down side to dry. The bagels are going to come out large and shrink back down most of the way as they've cooled.

Repeat to make as many bagels as you want.

Separate an egg white from the yolk (one egg white should handle 12 to 18 bagels).  Beat the egg white just to loosen it up a little, you don't want to actually create a foam.  Using a pastry brush, brush each of the bagels with the egg white.  Then cover as you please.  I like to use sesame seeds and poppy seeds.  For garlic bagels I use garlic powder and a little sald.  You have to experiment to get quantities. The seeds you can see. The garlic powder I do quite heavily, the salt quite sparingly.

Now flip the bagels onto parchment paper (one by one) and repeat the coating process on the second side.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes (or so)

Remove to a rack and allow to cool until moderately warm or all the way cool (at least 15 minutes).