Hello Sugar Cane: Baking Bagels : A Nigella Recipe

So I love bagels there is nothing wrong with that! When I was young growing up way down south (Milton Keynes) family from London would come to visit with big brown paper bags full of bagels. I would eat as many as I could while fresh and the the rest would be frozen or taken to school as a very special lunch until they where all gone. Of course back then in the 1980's no one at school even knew what a bagel was!

There have been times over the year where I have come across a bagel that has been as perfect as the ones I used to munch down when younger, but many bagel are just not that good so overtime I gave up with the joy of bagels. Well until now, after whatching a episode of The Great British bake Off a few weeks ago and was inspired to bake my own.

So using a Nigella recipe from How To Be A Domestic Goddess I've been making them every week for about 4 weeks now. The recipe makes 15 delicious bagels, I always eat one fresh as a treat with lots of butter then freeze the rest in pairs for a tasty breakfast boon every morning.

So you will need :

1 kg of white flour
7g of easy yeast
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus more for greasing
500mL warm water, plus more as needed
2 tablespoon of malt or sugar, for poaching the bagels
2-3 baking sheets, oiled or greased

Combine the flour, salt and yeast together in a large bowl, add the sugar and the oil to the water. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the liquid, mixing to a dough with a spatula or wooden spoon.

Knead the dough either by hand or with dough hook, trying to add more flour if you can, dough is better drier than wetter, the dough will be stiff and hard work, even with the dough hook it takes 10 minutes.

Form the dough into a ball and put it into an oiled bowl, turning once to coat all around, then cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave it to rise for 1 hour. It should be well risen, and when you poke it with your finger , the impression should remain.

Punch the dough down and then give a good knead and divide into 3 pieces. Using your hands, roll each piece into a rope then cut each rope into 5 pieces. Roll each piece between the palms of your hands into a ball and then roll into another rope, curling to form ring. Seal the ends by overlapping.

Put on a large pan of water to boil, when it boils add the malt or the sugar.

Sit the bagels on the baking sheets cover with cling film and leave for 20 minutes by which times they should be puffy. Preheat oven to 240C.

When the waters boiling, start poaching, drop a couple of bagels at a time into the boiling water and boil for 1 minute turning them once, use a couple of spatulas for this.