Sourdough Cheddar and Chive Bagels- More Trials & Tribulations...

After harvesting some fresh chives from my Mom Serena's deck box as pictured above I was inspired to make some sourdough bagels featuring this herb. I had never baked anything with chives in it and I was curious to find out how it would taste in a bagel. Since I'm experimenting with my sourdough starter and have successfully made bagels before, I decided to create a hybrid recipe out of a basic sourdough bagel recipe and give it a try. Wanting to also try a plain sourdough bagel I left part of the dough plain. This is an overnight + 2 day process (overnight to rise the sourdough sponge; 1 day to rise the dough, form the bagels and refrigerate them; and 1 morning to boil and bake the bagels.

Here is the recipe & the results:

Sourdough Cheddar Chive Bagels:

Makes: 7-12 bagels ( my first attempt yielded 7 bagels)

1/2 cup sourdough starter
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
3+ cups additional flour
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh chives

cornmeal for dusting baking sheet

1 egg beaten + 2 tablespoons water
+ 1/2 cup or more of shredded sharp cheddar cheese for topping the bagels

1. Mix sourdough starter, warm water, and flour in a bowl. Cover and let sit overnight (I let it sit in a sink full of warm water); the mixture should look bubbly in the morning.

2. To this mixture add the sugar, salt and #+ cups additional flour. Mix well.

3. Knead dough on a floured surface for 10 minutes or knead using a dough hook on a stand mixer for 10 minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise until double. I let the dough rise for about 6 hours before forming the bagels.

4. Punch down the dough and divide into 7-8 balls. Make sure to have a floured surface to form the bagels on. Roll each ball into a log and form a circle to form the bagel. Place the bagels on a baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Put a towel over the formed bagels on the sheet and refrigerate them overnight.

5. The next morning bring 2 quarts of water to a boil on the stove. Have near the stove a cooling rack that has been greased with a kitchen towel underneath it. Drop 2-3 bagels into the boiling water at a time. Boil for 15 seconds on each side. Then, remove them with a slotted spoon to drain on the cooling rack.

6. Mix the beaten egg with water. Brush this mixture on the bagels. Then, sprinkle the bagels with the remaining shredded sharp cheddar cheese.

7. Bake the bagels at 350F for 35 minutes. Bagels are finished with they are golden brown and shiny.

My results:

I altered this recipe a bit after baking the bagels this morning because although they are delicious I think that some things could be improved by trying the recipe again. They have a good flavor, and crust but they are a bit too dense. I did end up baking them a bit longer than 35 minutes after I saw how dense they were, but I think that other factors in the recipe contributed to their denseness. Below I'll outline why I think the changes (which have been applied to the recipe above) will help next time I make these bagels.

The initial sponge:

The original recipe called for only 2 tablespoons of sourdough starter mixed with warm water and flour to create a sponge for the dough to be mixed the following day after resting the sponge overnight. I think that that amount needs to be increased to at least a 1/2 cup because my dough did not rise very much.

Mixing in additional flour:

Next, I didn't mix in much more than 2 cups of additional flour to the sponge along with the sugar and salt. I think that additional flour might have helped the texture of the bagels to be a little bit lighter- still dense but not too dense!

Thus, I think that starting out with more sourdough starter in the sponge and adding more flour to the dough would greatly improve these bagels. It was a fun experiment and the chives were a great addition to the bagels. They still stayed quite fresh & flavorful in the finished product.

I think that my next baking project besides pie will involve regular yeast because although I have enjoyed my foray into sourdough baking it is fairly unpredictable. A little respite and time with some regular yeast recipes will restore my confidence so that once again I will tackle another sourdough recipe!

Happy Baking!

Potatoes and . . .

A week of interesting happenings ended with us finally being able to prepare the garden for potatoes and get them planted. The beginning of the week was really last Friday evening, after we posted our first blog post. We had planted three new fruit trees first thing that morning - a Green Gage plum, and two apples - Macintosh and Granny Smith. When putting the chickens in the chicken house, we decided to take a walk to see the rest of the orchard, and it was a good thing we did. A deer had decided to lunch on the Granny! We quickly surrounded each new tree with some fencing, so at least they are okay, but we don't have the fencing completely secure yet. More on that later.


We had a colder than average week, but at least it didn't freeze. We like to check NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency) for weather information, and discovered that they had other information for gardeners. One we really appreciated was their recommendations for fertilizer to protect our environment all the way from here to coral reefs. Chicken poop is at the top of their list! Humus is right behind! That seemed so funny, yet so nice, to know how our little chicken/egg/poop producers can help to save the planet.

In order to diversify, we planted four kinds of potatoes. If we're planning to eat all this good stuff, after all, who wants to eat the same old thing all the time? Monocultures are for industrial farmers, and we want to stay away from that as far as we can get. We hand-dug the bed because the soil is still pretty damp. Trista's son Adam even had fun getting in on the act with his little trowel! There was a nice breeze, so while we had lunch the soil had a chance to dry out a little, and we could get on with planting. We checked the recommendations from our local university, which suggested planting them 4 to 6 inches deep and about 1 foot apart in the row, with three feet between rows. Okay, we're all set.

All Blue potatoes went in first. We chose them because they aren't just pretty, they are supposed to have a higher vitamin and mineral content. We might as well be healthy along with all this diversity, right? Next we planted All Red. I think we might have a patriotic theme going here. The remaining potatoes we planted are the familiar Yukon Golds and last in was German Butterball.

We are harvesting rhubarb and chives right now. Permanent plantings are sure nice this time of year. The rhubarb will go into a pie, and the chives are going to have a starring role in some of Trista's lovely bread. Recipes will be coming soon!