Living out of our Pantry: Homemade Bagels

We enjoy living out of our pantry, and trying to see how long we can go in between grocery store trips.  One of my staples around here have become homemade bagels.  I think what I love about them is their many uses.  I'm sure you could create just about any bagel, but my favorite is to just do plain bagels.  We eat them for breakfast with either jelly or butter with cinnamon and sugar.  We eat them for lunch (or  dinner when the hubs is gone) as pizza bagels.  We even just heat them up and have them plain, because really, who doesn't love a soft warm bagel!  Last week, I made four DOZEN bagels!  Being a family of 8, that lasts us about a week!  Yes, we go through a LOT of bagels!

I first found the recipe on allrecipes.com, but they have since deleted the recipe. Thankfully I think I was able to pretty much recreate them.

Homemade Bagels:

~1 1/3 cups milk

~1/3 cup butter

~1 egg yolk

~4 cups bread flour (sometimes I feel like being healthy so I do 2 cups whole wheat and 2 cups white)

~1 teaspoon salt

~2 Tablespoons sugar

~2 teaspoons yeast

~Melt butter in a glass bowl.  Heat milk in a glass bowl.  (sometimes I do this together, but it takes the butter longer to melt, and I'm always afraid I'm going to scorch my milk).
~Mix milk, sugar, and yeast.  Stir to combine.  Add butter, egg yolk, and salt.  I put mine in my kitchen aid mixer at this point.
~Then I slowly, 1 cup at a time add the flour, beating in between each cup.  You know your bagel dough has enough flour when the dough is pulling away from the sides of your mixer, forming a nice ball on the blade.  

Oil a large bowl.  Place dough in bowl, flipping to cover dough in oil.
~Allow to rise for at least 1 hour (this will completely depend on how hot your house is, some days my dough rises in no time, and other days it takes several hours, so just keep checking it).  You will know it is done when your dough has doubled in bulk.

~Once doubled, take dough out and knead on a floured surface.
~Divide dough into 12 sections.  Take each section, roll it into a ball, and then poke a hole in the ball, stretching until it looks like a bagel.
~Let each "bagel" rest on floured surface for 10 minutes.
~Begin heating a pot of salted water.   Preheat oven to 400.
~Grease 2-3 pans VERY well, or use a stone (these are optimal as the bagels tend to really stick to the cookie sheets).
~Once water is boiling, place bagels in water, one at a time.  When the bagels rise to the top, they are ready to be removed.  Use a slotted spoon to remove bagels, and place immediately on your stone.  

~Bake for 18-20 minutes.

~Once cooled, I stack mine in gallon sized ziploc bags.  They freeze great!

Hope you enjoy them!