Blueberry Bagels!

This week I really wanted to be able to add fresh blueberries to bread and still be able to toast it for breakfast. This is quite difficult but I think I may have found the trick in making these bagels.


I used a recipe that I found on the blog The Fresh Loaf which was adapted from the book The Bread Bakers Apprentice.

Here is my version of the recipe along with my notes.



Light Whole Wheat Cinnamon Blueberry Bagels-
- Adapted from The Bread Bakers Apprentice

Makes: 12-17 bagels (I made 17 bagels with 1 recipe)

Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant yeast
4 cups bread flour
2 1/2 cups water- warm from the tap

Dough:
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
2 cups bread flour
2 cup whole wheat flour
2 3/4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons malt powder
OR
1 tablespoon malt syrup, honey, or brown sugar- I used honey

Mix in struesel:
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
6 tablespoons softened butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup frozen blueberries. ( I bought fresh ones, washed them and put them in a freezer bag when my dough was just about done- about 20-30 minutes later they were frozen enough to put into the dough)

Finishing touches:
1 tablespoon honey for the water
Cornmeal for dusting the pan
Egg wash for the bagels- 1 egg- beaten mixed with 1-2 tablespoons water

The Night or Late Afternoon Before:

Stir the yeast into the flour in a large mixing bowl. Add the water and stir until all ingredients are blended. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for two hours. As you can see in the photo above the sponge gets very bubbly.- I let it rise slightly longer than two hours because I wanted to finish eating dinner before I made the dough. I think that any recipe that starts with a sponge is going to turn into a lighter, fluffier, more flavorful bread because it seems like the yeast gets a good head start in rising.

Remove the plastic wrap and stir the additional yeast into the sponge. Add 2 cups of the flour, the 2 cups of whole wheat flour, the malt powder or honey and the salt into the bowl and mix until all of the ingredients form a ball. You may need to work in the additional 3/4 cups of flour to make the dough less sticky, either while still mixing in the bowl or while kneading. The dough should be stiffer and drier than normal bread dough, but moist enough that all of the ingredients are well blended.

At this point I also made the struesel by mixing together the butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.

Knead each half of the dough for about 10 minutes on a floured board. After the dough is kneaded work in small bits of the struesel mixture and mix in well to create a "swirled" cinnamon dough.

Right after kneading, divide the dough into a dozen small pieces around 4 1/2 ounces each. I used a kitchen scale to measure out each ball. If you don't have a kitchen scale, try to divide the dough as evenly as possible into 12-14 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and set it aside. When you have all 12 pieces made, cover them with a damp towel and let them rest for 20 minutes.

Shaping the bagel is very simple. Punch your thumb through the center of each roll and then rotate the dough, working it so that the bagel is as even in width as possible. As you shape the bagels "poke" in several frozen blueberries into each bagel. I left some of the bagels plain too.

Place the shaped bagels on an oiled sheet pan or pans, with an inch or so of space between one another. If you have parchment paper, line the sheet pan with parchment and spray it lightly with oil or pan spray before placing the bagels on the pan. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise for about 20 minutes.

After about 20 minutes of rising time, place the baking sheets in the refrigerator overnight. This will develop the flavor in the bagels. This time with the blueberry bagels I forgot to do the extra 20 minute rising, I think that is why they are not as round and puffy, but they are still yummy!

The Next Morning:

Preheat the oven to 500F. I decided to use the convection feature on my oven- so it was set at 475F. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add one tablespoon of honey to the pot.

When the pot is boiling, drop a few of the bagels into the pot one at a time and let them boil for a minute. Use a large, slotted spoon or spatula to flip them over and boil them on the other side.

Before removing them from the pot, sprinkle corn meal onto the sheet pan. Remove them one at a time, set them back onto the sheet pan. At this point you can top the bagels with seeds, etc. if you wish while they are still wet. Otherwise you can leave them plain, or brush an egg wash on them.

Place the sheet pan into the preheated oven and bake for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to 450 degrees, (or 425 in a convection oven) rotate the pan, and bake for another 5 minutes until the bagels begin to brown. Remove the pan from the oven and let cool. I let the bagels bake a total of 15 minutes with a couple of rotations because the temperature was a bit lower and I wanted them to brown a bit more.

Enjoy! Below is a picture of my split and buttered bagel. Yum! These bagels were very light, moist and flavorful. I might experiment with putting a blueberry compote in them or something else another time, but overall they were great!