Bagel Madness Begins - Basic Recipe

About two weeks ago, I was cleaning bookshelves and found a bread machine cookbook with a recipe for bread machine bagels. I have 2 bread machines, and I love bagels, so this seemed like a great idea. That's what started the journey. I made 2 batches of 9 rather smallish bagels but they tasted great. That's when it struck me that bagels might make a good Christmas gift. I started searching online for recipes for bread machine bagels. What I realized is that if I stuck to the basic recipe, I could vary some ingredients and add a few and have endless variations. The first thing I did was make only 8 bagels per batch and that seemed like a better size and easier to divide the dough.

my recipe is:
2 tsp olive oil
1 cup warm water
3 cups all purpose flour
1 TBS Sugar
1 tsp active dry yeast

I place them in my bread machine in that order and run the dough cycle.

I'm using two Hitachi HB B102 Machines. One I bought new about 18 years ago, the other I found in a nice resale shop for 10 bucks about 3 years ago. Both work great. They make 1.5 lb loafs.

The more accurately you measure the better your results will be.

When the dough cycle ends, I punch down the dough and let it sit for 10 minutes with a towel over the top of the pans.

Then I turn it out onto a cutting board and divide each batch into 8 balls.

I roll them in my hands then push my finger through the middle to make a hole. I spin it around my index finger like a hula hoop until the hole is about 2 inches around. Shape it and place on a pan that is oiled or has cornmeal or parchment paper. Cover with some paper towel and let sit for 20 minutes.

Next put the rack in your oven to the highest level and turn on broil. Broil the bagels for 1 and 1/2 minutes on each side. The bagels shouldn't get brown.

In the meantime, boil a large pot of water with 1-2 tbs of sugar in it. When it comes to a boil, turn down the heat, and drop 4 bagels at a time into the water, flip after 2 minutes, and cook two more minutes. Drain on the paper towel you used to cover the rising bagels.

Next after the boiling, place back on the cookie sheets and brush with egg wash made from 2 egg whites and 2 TBS of water.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. I usually trade the pans to the other level about halfway through.

Thoroughly cool on wire racks.