kareina

As mentioned in in-progress updates twice already today, I tried a bagel recipe today and made a second batch with what I consider to be a much more reasonable amount of sugar (I used honey in my version) and salt.

While my version rose higher in the mixing bowl before punching down, they behaved differently during shaping, boiling and baking. The one following the recipe puffed up to little round balls, with most of their rising going upwards, while my version rose both up and out, and so wound up looking a bit more like a bagel.

On the other hand, slicing them open and looking at the texture inside and they look exactly the same. The only way to tell them apart is to taste them. The recipe version tastes salty and slightly sweet, mine is just pure, yummy, bready flavour. However, even the recipie version is good enough to be willing to eat, it is just that mine is better. In fact, I had intended to eat only a half bagel of each type for the taste-test comparison, but both were good enough, still hot from the oven, that I ate a full bagel each, and my mouth is voting for going back for another (but my tum thinks I would be wise to stop here for an hour or so).

If your diet consists of large quantities of restaurant food or the pre-made heat & eat supermarket options you will probably like the original recipe better, because you are accustomed to high levels of sugar and salt in your diet. If, on the other hand, you eat like I do, with at least 95% of your food home made or fresh and you rarely reach for the sugar or salt jars, you will, like me, strongly prefer my version.

As I mentioned a while ago, I am trying two versions of a bagel dough today. I assumed before trying it that my dough would rise at least as much as the published version, since while I am using much, much less sugar, I am also using lots less salt. The published version of the dough has been rising for a full hour, mine for 15 to 20 minutes less than that. Even with the shorter rising time, mine was sitting slightly higher in its bowl than the published version. Letting them rest a bit before shaping. Stay tuned for further updates after baking...

This morning there was a link to a bagel recipe in my blog reader. While I have baked probably 1000's of batches of bread, rolls, etc. over the years I have never actually bothered to bake bagels, so today I decided to try it. However, that recpipe has obscenly huge amounts of both sugar and salt compared to the way I typically bake. On the other hand, it is also a tiny batch of dough. Therefore I decided to do two batches--one using the full amount of sugar and salt specified, and one using only 1 teaspoon of honey instead of 1.5 tablespoons of sugar and only 0.25 teaspoons of salt instead of 1.25 teaspoons.

They are rising now. Stay tuned for a review in a couple of hours, when they are done. My hypothesis is that my version will taste much better, and will probably rise just as much--while mine has less sugar (which tends to make for happy yeast), it also has less salt (which tends to inhibit yeast).

I promised a friend I would type up what I did to make the yummy saffron bread rolls I baked when she was here the week before last, and I am finally remembering to make time to do so. All measurements are approximate, since I usually don't actually measure while baking, but just use "enough".

Set a cup of white flour in a bowl with a tablespoon or two of dry yeast, stir enough hot/warm water to make it kind of liquidy and set it aside.

put a large pinch of saffron threads in a mortar and pestle along with a tablespoon of white sugar, and grind till it is all even sized yellow powder and there are no visible thread bits remaining. Put that in the bowl with the flour/water/yeast. Put a large tablespoon of rolled oats into the mortar and pestle and grind that to loosen up the bits of sugar/saffron that are stuck to the sides. Add that to the flour/water/yeast/etc. and repeat with another tablespoon of oats. Repeat grinding oats a third time and confirm that there is no longer any trace of saffron/sugar stuck to the mortar and pestle.

To the flour/water/yeast/etc. mix add: two tablespoons honey, 1/4 cup milk powder, pinch of salt, two tablespoons (or more) of butter, two eggs, two cups of water. Stir in white flour, a bit at a time, till the dough is thick enough to knead. Knead it and let it rise an hour. shape rolls into knots by taking 1/4 cup of flour at a time, rolling it out into a log, and tying it in an overhand knot, then tuck one end under, and the other end up through the middle of the knot to make a button (see photo in icon for example). Brush rolls with melted butter and let rest 30 minutes. Bake in a hot oven (175 C) till they are just starting to turn golden brown (not very long--perhaps 10 to 20 minutes???--I just use the nose alarm, rather than watching a clock). I like to brush them with melted butter again at the half way baked point, and once more when they come out of the oven and I move them to a cooling rack.

For those of you who like a list, this recipe used:

white flour (5 to 10 cups?)
water (3 cups?)
freshly ground oat flour (3 to 6 tablespoons)
eggs (2)
butter (several tablespoons between what went into the dough and what went on the outside)
milk powder (1/4 cup)
white sugar (one tablespoon)
honey (two tablespoons)
saffron (large pinch)
salt (small pinch, or just use salted butter)

Edited to add: This recipe turns out to be similar to a saffron, oat, and almond bread I posted some time back. I am not surprised that I repeat myself with techniques that work, nor am I surprised that both of these got people to ask me for the recipe. Nice of LJ to give us tags, so that I can look this up--when I started to type "saffron" in the tags today, it suggested that word in the auto-fill, which told me I had used it before, so I went looking to see when...

One of my friends asked me today for the "recipe" for today's bread.

I can still sort of remember what I did to make it, so I thought I would write it down. Measurements are approximate, since I don't actually measure stuff while I bake breads.

First I started a bread sponge by mixing yeast with 1 cup of flour and enough hot water to make a liquidy dough.

While the yeast woke up I combined 1/4 cup of powdered milk with a packet of saffron (they sell it here as a powder in little tiny foil packs, which I have been amusing are intended to use the whole thing at once, since there is no way to close them again once they are open) and added two cups of water (a little at a time, of course, to make certain the milk powder actually dissolved.

Then I microwaved the milk/saffron for a minute. Then I cooled the milk/saffron by putting in thin slices of cold butter from the fridge (I used a cheese slicer). plus a a couple of heaping spoonfuls of cold honey from the fridge. I am not certain how much butter it was, but given that the glass two cup measure I used for the liquid got very full it could have been as much as 1/2 cup of butter and honey combined.

in the time it took the butter and honey to melt I ground some almonds and then some oats in the food processor. Perhaps one cup nuts and two of the oats?

I then combined all of the above with two eggs, and added enough white flour to make a good bread dough.

I let it rise a good hour, punched it down and let it rise again before shaping bread rolls. I made the rolls using 1/4 cup of dough each, rolled them into balls, flattened them a bit, brushed the tops with butter, and let them rise again before baking.

This made made 30 rolls (plus an additional 1/2 cup of dough which got baked while the rest of the dough was doing its first rising), which I managed to bake all at one go, since my oven has a fan in it. I baked them at 150 C till they were just starting to get a golden soft colour. I brushed them with more melted butter as soon as they came out of the oven.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

recipe review

hypothesis part two is panning out so far

in the mood to try two versions

saffron rolls

saffron, oat, and almond bread

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June 2025

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