Nosh Homemade Bagels--free of dairy, egg, nuts, & cross contamination!

As many of you know, one of Tristan's favorite foods is bagels.  We kept our local Noah's Bagels in business until recently, when Tristan seemed to have generally more allergic reactions from packaged foods presumably due to cross contamination.  The reactions happened to coincide with the introduction of the drippy, gooey, peanut butter and jelly bagel at Noah's, and that was my last straw.

To say something for Noah's, we've eaten literally hundreds of bagels over the last 9 years of his life, and had never had an allergy issue.  But I didn't want to hang around and find out when our luck would run out.  So just recently, we stopped buying Noah's Bagels.

Well, we were passing by our local Noah's the other day and Tristan broke into tears, saying how sad he felt that he couldn't have bagels anymore.  They were one of the last food items I regularly bought him on the go--and they were gone.  The little things in the life of a food allergic child break my heart every day.

Fortunately, this turn of events also coincided with the arrival of our bread machine.  And our world, which felt closed and desolate to my three little carbivores (term coined by our friend Bella), suddenly opened up.  All sorts of bread, fresh pitas for sandwiches and hummus dipping, and now, bagels.  Who would've thought?

I found a recipe that looked tried and true for Bread Machine Bagels, and wanted to try them out right away--the ingredients were so simple and not unlike most of my bread machine recipes so far.  Bread flour and yeast are ingredients you will likely have to get to a store to purchase.  I found King's Bread Flour from my local Safeway.

Unfortunately, I put the ingredients in the machine, set to make the dough, did 17 other things, and forgot to put it in the fridge so I could make it the next day.  When I opened up the machine in the morning, the dough smelled sour.  Fermentation had definitely taken place.  Don't do this--major Pinterest fail.

The over-fermented bagels were inedible but it gave me some bagel rolling practice.  Watch a few seconds of this YouTube video of a Davidovich Bakery baker rolling bagels for some inspiration, then onto this Cooking Dish video for three methods to rolling a bagel.  It's essentially a twist and pinch method.  Alternatively, you could flatten a ball of dough and poke a hole in the middle.  I found the twist and pinch method easy enough.

The next day, I tried again, and this morning--fresh bagels!  Not so shabby.  If you're used to the size of Noah's bagels, you'll probably make about 4 bagels with this recipe instead of the batch of 9 specified on the original recipe. Instead of the egg wash, I used soy milk to glaze the tops, and increased the water a bit after others commented about this.  I'm excited to experiment with different fillers, but for now, here's the recipe for plain bagels:


Plain Bread Machine Bagels (NO dairy, egg, tree nuts, or peanuts)

Ingredients

1 1/8 cups warm water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons white sugar
3 cups bread flour
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
3 quarts boiling water
3 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons of soy milk (or other safe milk)

Directions

1.  Pour water, salt, sugar, bread flour, and yeast into a bread machine according to manufacturer's instructions.  Start on dough setting.

2.  When the dough is done, boil the 3 quarts of water in a large pot with 3 tablespoons of sugar. Preheat the oven to 375 F.  Roll the dough into 4 to 9 bagels, depending on how big you want them.  Then set them to rest for 10 minutes while the water boils.

3.  Boil the bagels for 1 minute, then turn them over and boil for another minute.  Put them on a towel to dry.

4.  Transfer the bagels to a cookie pan lined with parchment, and brush the tops with the soy milk.

5.  Bake for 20 - 28 minutes until the tops are lightly browned.