I see a lot of y'all make your own bread. What about making your own bagels? The recipes I've read look easy enough, but I'm guessing the reality of it might not be so simple.
Also, unrelated, buy toothbrushes with a smaller head. If you're like me, you're gonna put toothpaste across the whole brush, and since the most recent brushes I bought have longer heads, I'm definitely using more toothpaste. I haven't managed to stop doing it, even after I noticed.
Bagels and toothpaste. A question and a tip.
byu/mmmbopforever inFrugal
Posted by mmmbopforever
6 Comments
As somebody who has made bagels before, they are not hard to do once you figure out the hand motions to shape them properly, but figuring that part out can be tricky for some people.
As for the toothbrush, just….dab a glob onto it, don’t squeeze and swipe?
Bagels are simple enough to make, but lots of steps, so lots of dishes.
My homemade bagels tasted good, but I couldn’t tell if they were too chewy or not. Usually with bread then if it’s dense and chewy then you messed up, but you’re aiming for it with bagels.
For this reason, I don’t like making them myself.
As far as the toothpaste goes, A dentist told me that all you really need is a pea-sized blob of toothpaste, so that’s all I’ve used for like the last 30 years. The toothpaste tube says you need a long strip so that you use more and have to buy it more often.
Any kind of bread making is more of a time investment than anything else. You have to essentially figure out if your time/cost ratio is worth it. For instance, I used to make sourdough bread for my family. The first 2 or 3 bakes, had issues (bread was too tight, didn’t proof long enough, etc.) but the real issue was the timing. You can start the bread making the night before, but there’s a lot of proofing and kneading that happens. It’s not hard, but it takes time. If you have the time, totally worth it, but if you over proof or under proof you could have bread that doesn’t turn out quite right…
My friend’s mom makes her own bagels and they are amazing. She said it took a few tries before they were good, but if you’ve got the time they aren’t expensive to make a few throw away batches.
I don’t enjoy baking bagels; I have trouble with them deflating in the boiling water process. But it’s not terribly hard.
English Muffin Bread is an easy recipe that I make sometimes that is slightly bagel-y in that you can spread things on it and it has more texture than just regular bread.