so my friend david told me stories of how he and his mother always make bagels, how much fun they have, and how good they are. when he said he would be in town i thought “great, he can teach me how to make bagels!” i typically try out recipes on my own, but since i have had some difficulties with yeast breads in the past, and it sounded like a fun thing to have company for… i figured i would wait for him.
david arrived saturday morning, excited for some bagel-makin’. i got out the ingredients and looked over at him, expecting him to get us started. *this* is when i found out that david has never actually made bagels. david’s mother makes bagels. okay, to be fair, he has turned the small round pieces of dough that his mother made into bagels by boiling and baking them.
in any case, we had fun making them. they ended up tasting more like bread (yes, there’s a difference, for those that have never had a ny/nj bagel), but still good… especially for some delicious tomato mozzarella sammies! i am fairly certain that the reason they ended up flatter than they should have been was due to my poor choice of utensils to stir the yeast/warm water combo (a bunch got stuck), as well as being afraid to over knead.

re-bake will be coming on this one!