Bagel Throwdown!

I've never really been very good at working with yeasted breads or doughs. Handling the dough is an art and you have to be extremely patient; one of which I lack a tremendous amount of, which is why I'm baking in the first place. I need something to do to help keep my mind off of TTC. Today is CD 15 and H still has not ovulated. We have a nitrogen tank with two vials of swimmers that "expires" tomorrow and she still has yet to ovulate. She's never not ovulated by now so we are at a loss as to what to do next. So, we decided to have a bagel war! It didn't start out as a war, but rather an 'Um, is the dough suppose to be crumbly?, no, you fix it' conversation.

Periodically H and I will flip through cook books and look for recipes that we A.) have not tried B.) sounds yummy and C.) looks easy enough to try. Last night H found a recipe for boiled bagels that looked easy enough. After finding out that H still had not ovulated, we decided to keep ourselves preoccupied with baking. The first ten minutes or so started out fine. I sifted the flour (okay, okay, so it didn't say to sift the flour, but I was in one of my 'helpful' moods), added the sugar and salt, whisked the yeast in luke warm water (110 degrees exactly) and added to the dry ingredients, and then set the mixer on the lowest speed possible. The recipe said to mix the dough for 10 minutes, which I did, but the dough was NOT soft...it was crumbly and dry. H and I read the recipe for the hundredth time and we followed it to the letter, but there was just not enough water. I was about to scrap the whole thing and start over, when H figured we could just add more water and see if that helped. I'm terrified of dough...I figure if you add anything beyond what the recipe calls for, you're asking for trouble. H thinks that's nonsense. She spent about another 5-10 minutes working with it and was able to get it to at least resemble dough. We placed it in an oiled bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and let it rise, but we were convinced that it was going to come out like CRAP! While the first dough was rising H decided to look on the internet for another bagel recipe to try. What she found was that most bagel recipes called for less flour. Since we were convinced that the first batch was doomed, we started on a second batch. Hence the bagel throwdown!!

The second batch that H started looked better right away. It actually resembled dough. Below and above is the outcome of the bagels. I think that I won but H has a different version. If you ask her she would say hers didn't come out as well because she was tired after all the effort it took to save my batch. hmmmm.....right..... If that what gets her through.

Hopefully, H ovulates tomoorrow. I don't think our kitchen can handle any more throwdowns.