Home made bagels

Ben84

I always thought it was bicarbonate of soda in the water, or is that just a traditional Jewish way of making them?

jackieglasgow

Molasses/treacle in the water is the secret.

rachbc

traditionally its lye in the water but that is caustic so bicarb is suggested as an alternative, or malt extract, or molasses, or sugar - seem to be endless variations. I've tried bicarb, sugar and malt and malt is my fav

Living_proof

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

If they were sweet, they'd taste awful with smoked salmon and cream cheese, which is the classic combination.

We eat this very often with home made bread with caraway seeds in it, but shop-bought bagels are defo. sweet!

Living_proof

Thank you jackieglasgow I will give that a go - in a spare minute!

Oldernotwiser

Living_proof wrote: »

We eat this very often with home made bread with caraway seeds in it, but shop-bought bagels are defo. sweet!

The ones I buy in Tesco aren't.

[Deleted User]

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

If they were sweet, they'd taste awful with smoked salmon and cream cheese, which is the classic combination.

If they were sweet then you wouldn't eat them with salmon - seems common sense to me.

As others have posted most bagel recipes are made with a sweetner such as malt, honey, sugar, but as with all breads there are many different recipes to choose from and presumably you would choose to eat a plainer bagel with salmon. As I am a vegi I don't have this problem.

Oldernotwiser

Spider_In_The_Bath wrote: »

If they were sweet then you wouldn't eat them with salmon - seems common sense to me.

As others have posted most bagel recipes are made with a sweetner such as malt, honey, sugar, but as with all breads there are many different recipes to choose from and presumably you would choose to eat a plainer bagel with salmon. As I am a vegi I don't have this problem.

Sorry, my point was simply that a normal bagel isn't a sweet sort of bread as it's intended to be eaten with savoury fillings. The kind that have cinnamon etc. added are quite a recent invention. ( I daresay you can get some sor t of abomination like chocolate bagels these days!)

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

I think bagels are supposed to be slightly sweet - as in proper bagels with lox. Not like a sweet bread, but with just a tiny note of sweetness from the malt/sugar/molasses in the water.

Unless it's passover and then the bagels are made with matzo meal and are far more savoury.

The things sold in Tesco's don't really bear much relation to proper bagels.