{Recipe} Plain bagels

We don't have a kosher bakery near us (not that I know of anyway) and the bagels we get from Coles are $5.40 for 4, that can get quite steep to have every other morning. 

I've been meaning to try out the bagel recipe in this book, One more slice by Leila Lindholm, for a while now. I've tried out her pizza, brownies and a few other recipes and I liked them. I think I got the book from Book Depository when they had one of their hourly flash sales.

It's a recipe with simple ingredients but from my experience, requires a bit of technical expertise. I followed it pretty much to the T but next time I'll know what to do differently. Have a look at my notes at the bottom. 

These bagels are absolutely delicious toasted. They are best eaten on the day and I recommend slicing and freezing what you have left for later. 

Bagels (makes about 12)

Ingredients
800g bread flour
2 tsp dry instant yeast
1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp honey
500ml lukewarm water
Polenta (optional)
1 egg white

1. Mix all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix in honey. Add water little by little until incorporated. 
   
2. Using the dough hook on your mixer, knead for 10-15 minutes (see notes). If kneading by hand, I'm guessing you'd have to knead for a long time. 
   
3. Cover bowl with a tea towel and leave to rise for about 50 minutes until doubled in size. 
   
4. Knead dough by hand for a few minutes and divide them into 12 portions (we had 13 because I gave a piece to Umar; he used cookie cutters, cutlery and whatever else he could use with it). Liberally flour (or use polenta) a baking tray or two.
   
   
   
5. Shape them into balls and press in the middle with your thumb and stretch out the round shape. Place the circles on the floured trays and cover with a tea towel and let rise again for another 40 minutes. 
   
6. Preheat oven to 180°C (170°C fan-forced). Place 2 pizza stones to heat up as well. In the meantime, put a huge pot of water to a roiling boil.
   
7. Drop in 2 bagels at a time for about 30 seconds (make sure they're submerged in water the entire time).  
   
8. Dry on them on paper towels.
9. Take out the pizza stones and sprinkle some polenta on them. Arrange bagels on top, brush with beaten egg white and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden or to your liking. If you don't have pizza stones, you can line a baking tray or two with baking paper and arrange the bagels on them. This will probably result in a soggy bottom but they'll still be delicious.
   
10. Cool, slice and enjoy with your favourite toppings!
    

Notes:

• It's still cold here so I let my dough rise in the oven at 30°C.
• Umar's dough, which he kneaded like crazy, turned out the best bagel in the batch. So I will recommend kneading on the longer side. I suppose the more you work the gluten, the chewier (the better) the bagels.
• Next time, I will try replacing some of the bread flour with gluten flour to make it even stronger.
• Next time I will make larger holes because they really do puff up after the second rise. The holeless bagels bothered me so much that I used a tiny cookie cutter to make new holes after boiling them haha.
• I used baking paper for the second rise and the dough stuck to it, making them lose their shape when I peeled them off to boil.

I will update the recipe if I do anything else differently.

Thank you for stopping by!

{Recipe} No cook breakfast: Apple and cinnamon muesli

A repost from my old blog horrendezvous.blogspot.com

How many times have you stumbled out of bed wishing you had already had something ready for breakfast instead of having to put on a frying pan and crack those eggs? Well, that happens to me pretty much every morning so I tend to skip it even though my mum keeps drumming it into me that ‘breakfast is the most freaking important meal of the day!’. Ok, she didn’t really say it that way. So when I stumbled upon this post by Fat Mum Slim, I made it (a variation of it anyway) right away. The beauty of this recipe is that you can have whatever variations you crave.

Apple and cinnamon muesli (serves 1)

Ingredients

½ cup traditional oats (not quick)
½ cup milk (I used whole as I love the creaminess; skim is fine too)
2 tbsp vanilla yogurt (go on sneak a couple of spoons more)
½ apple, coarsely chopped (eat the rest :P)
Honey for drizzling (optional)
Ground cinnamon for sprinkling (optional)

1. Shake oats, milk and yogurt up in an airtight container and leave in the fridge overnight.
2. Good morning! Drizzle the honey and sprinkle the cinnamon on, grab a spoon and enjoy!

Tips and variations: 

• This recipe can be easily multiplied and for breakfast on-the-go, simply put in separate containers.
• Substitute apple with a handful of blueberries/strawberries and top with more.
• Substitute apple with a handful of dried cranberries and milk with cranberry juice (great body cleanser).
• Substitute vanilla yogurt with plain/or any kind really.
• If you use a yogurt with fruity bits, you can skip fresh fruit altogether.

The Big Kahuna is a chronic snacker and he says when he has this for breakfast, he does not think of snacks at all, gets him straight to lunch. So do have a try.

Ta ra~

{Recipe} Basic pancakes

Apologies for the quietness, time just flew by! I hope it's not too late to wish a happy new year to everyone!

This is our go-to recipe every weekend (and some weekdays). I think I saw it on a Jamie Oliver cooking show but I have tweaked it to suit our needs. I've used different kinds of flours and they pretty much turned out great every time. And of course, the kiddies can join in too as it's a fairly easy recipe to prepare the ingredients ahead for them. Umar loves the pouring and mixing involved.

Basic pancakes recipe (makes about 12 good-sized pancakes)

Ingredients:

1 cup self raising flour*
1 large egg
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence (optional)

*I have substituted with plain flour/wholemeal flour plus 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp baking powder. I have also tried different brands of flour. The fluffiest pancakes I've made so far were using Lighthouse self-raising flour.

Simply multiply recipe for bigger serves.

1. Place flour in a medium bowl. Crack the egg in the middle and whisk.
   
2. Gradually add in milk and essence and whisk until thoroughly mixed.
   
   
   
    
3. Leave for 5-10 minutes for the raising agents to work their magic.
4. In the meantime, heat up your pans (I usually put a few on so I can cook through a few pancakes at once.)
5. Start cooking! (I put the pancake mix in a condiment bottle with the opening widened (cut) a tad more to get nice round pancakes)
   
6. When the top bubbles, it's time to flip and a minute more and your pancakes are ready!
   
7. Serve with fresh fruit/berries, butter and plenty of maple syrup, yum!

 

 Thank you for stopping by!