The skin set in water#
Bagels. 55% water, 14% protein, cooked twice.
The hydration goes backwards#
| Week | Bread | Hydration |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Plain loaf | 65% |
| 3 | Ciabatta | 78% |
| 8 | Bagel | 55% |
Not enough water to lubricate the strands, so they link up slowly. Twelve minutes on low, and the mixer walks.
Malt does three jobs#
- colour — there is no other sugar in the formula
- flavour — the malt note you cannot get from flour
- food — about two-thirds maltose, straight to the yeast
Non-diastatic only. Live enzyme does nothing at 4 °C and too much in the oven.
Open the hole to 5 cm#
It will look absurd on the bench.
The ring swells in the boil and again in the oven. A hole that looked right yesterday is a navel today.
Forty-five seconds a side#
The first cooking is the one that decides what it is.
What the water does#
Surface starch gelatinises into a gel skin about a millimetre thick.
- a lid — oven spring is cut short, the crumb stays dense
- a gloss — tacky and sugar-rich, so seeds actually stick
- a chew — set in water, not in the oven
pH sets the crust colour#
| Boil water | pH | Crust |
|---|---|---|
| Malt syrup | ~6.5 | Warm tan, malty |
| Bicarbonate, 1 tbsp/L | ~8.5 | Darker, faint pretzel |
| Food-grade lye | ~13 | Mahogany — not this bench |
Alkali makes the surface proteins far more reactive to Maillard browning.
Three ways it fails#
| What you see | What happened |
|---|---|
| Wrinkled, leathery | Over-boiled, or over-proofed |
| Dense puck, pale crumb | Boiled before it floated |
| No hole left | Never opened wide enough |
Then 225 °C, dry. Steam is week 2’s tool, not this one’s.