An obscure passage in Genesis states “And God said: let there be bagels, and there were. And it was good.” I found and joined the website Chefsteps.com this weekend. One of their detailed recipes describes how to make homemade bagels. Go to their website and search for bagels for the procedure. While making bagels at home is a relatively long process much of it is waiting for the dough to rise, or cool or knead in the mixer. I estimate it required 1-2 hours of actual man (person) time to make them. It required about 20 total hours with all the resting, rising and cooling, most of it being overnight.

I had to make one substitution and one modification to the published recipe. I did not have malt syrup to add to the boiling water. Instead I used molasses. I could have used honey, but the comments said this produces more of a “Montreal” bagel. The molasses was spot on. Also, to increase the pH of the water I used baked baking soda.  Baking baking soda (I could have worded this differently, but this was more fun to write) drives out water and carbon dioxide, reducing the positive charge, thereby making the baking soda more alkali and more similar to lye. This enhances the maillard reaction which provides the crunchy, slightly blistered brown bagel surface.