Hey, sweeties, roll up your sleeves and let’s begin. You can either print out this recipe or bring the laptop into the kitchen. This recipe is linked under the icon on the sidebar so you will always be able to find it in the future if you want to wait a few weeks to try this lesson. If you do end up making bagels–regardless of whether they turn out perfectly or end up a burned, twisted heap of dough–blog about it and send me the link at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will add all links (regardless of when they come in–still send it if you’re reading this in 2010) to the bagel posts so future bakers can read along with other people’s experiences too. I would appreciate it if you blog about it if you’ll link back to this post so your readers can find these other blogs too.

Pour in 1 1/4 cup of water. I keep my water in a brita in the refrigerator. I know that the exact temperature you’ll need can be produced by placing the water for 50 seconds in the microwave. Since I can’t give you an exact temperature, I’d suggest leaving a cup of water in the refrigerator overnight and then placing it in the microwave for 50 seconds. The result looks like this:

Place the Kitchenaid bowl in the mixer and use the dough hook. Now step away for a minute or two and just observe. The dough will start out dry and shreddy-looking. It will then start to pick up and come together into a smooth ball of dough, leaving no flour on the sides of the bowl. If in 5 minutes, it isn’t beginning to look like this…

…a
dd a dash of water. And I really mean a dash. Under a tsp. A little water goes a long way in this recipe. Once it looks like the picture above, let it go for a bit until the dough is smooth and satiny. It will look something like this:

Note the super clean sides of the Kitchenaid bowl. Take the dough over to your silpat (you could also probably use a sheet of parchment paper, but silpats are such a great workspace and they’re reusable so…worth the investment). Divide it in half. Then divide each half in half. Then divide each of those half in half. You should have 8 chunks of dough. Cup your hands and roll them into tight balls like so:

Place a damp paper towel over them (you can use a damp cloth towel, but make sure you launder it afterwards. I once left the towels to wash a day or two later and I had to throw them out because they were covered in mold. Not nice. I now use disposable paper towels).

Rest the little balls of dough. Set the timer for 10 minutes. You can use this time to start on a second batch of dough.

The timer goes off and now it’s time to shape them. Take a baking sheet and cover it in foil and sprinkle cornmeal across the surface. The picture should show you how much cornmeal you need:

You’ve probably read a bunch of recipes where they tell you to make a long rope and loop the ends together–forget it. Those bagels always pull apart. Instead, pop your thumb through the center of the ball of dough.

Then working from the center out, open up the hole and turn the bagel as you work so its of equal thickness all the way around the bagel (check out that pomegranate thread!).

Place these bagels on the prepared baking sheets, making sure that the dough has a little space to rise (it won’t change shape a lot, but leave an inch between bagels). Cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator. Now walk away for 12–18 hours. And then continue on with Part Two: Baking Bagels…

*Wait! What if you want cinnamon raisin bagels? All other bagel flavours will be dealt with during the baking process, but cinnamon raisin bagels require a few extra ingredients. Mix into your dough (prior to pouring in the water), 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tbsp cinnamon, and 2 handfuls of raisins. Pour in the water and proceed as usual.

Hey, sweeties, roll up your sleeves and let’s continue. If you haven’t made your dough yet, click here to read Part One first. You can either print out this recipe or bring the laptop into the kitchen. This recipe is linked under the icon on the sidebar so you will always be able to find it in the future if you want to wait a few weeks to try this lesson. If you do end up making bagels–regardless of whether they turn out perfectly or end up a burned, twisted heap of dough–blog about it and send me the link at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will add all links (regardless of when they come in–still send it if you’re reading this in 2010) to the bagel posts so future bakers can read along with other people’s experiences too. I would appreciate it if you blog about it if you’ll link back to this post so your readers can find these other blogs too.

Bagels (Part Two)

It has been twelve hours, right? Take out the baking sheet from the refrigerator. If you’ve made more than one sheet, take out two of them (I usually make three sheets of bagels each time. So I take two out of the refrigerator at once and go back for the other one about ten minutes later). Preheat the oven to 450 degrees (F). Set the timer for 10 minutes. Walk away and read a blog or two.

When the buzzer goes off, come back to the kitchen and get a large pot and fill it with water. I like a large, wide spaghetti pot rather than a tall one. To be honest, I have a piece-of-shit pot with wobbly handles that I got at the food store for $7. All you’re doing is boiling a bagel. It doesn’t have to be a nice Calphalon pot. Let the water come to a boil for the next 10 minutes (all in all, it should be about 20 minutes between taking the bagels out of the refrigerator and boiling them). Peel the plastic wrap off the bagels. They look like this:

Or like this:

See, they didn’t change a lot in the refrigerator. Once the water is boiling, drop in as many bagels will fit at once in your pot if they’re all floating on the surface. In my pot, it’s four bagels. In your pot, it may only be two. Drop them cornmeal-side-up into the boiling water and set the timer for 30 seconds.

Plain bagels float on the surface. For some reason, cinnamon raisin bagels drop to the bottom. Note this difference–there’s nothing wrong with your bagels.

After 30 seconds, flip over the bagels so they are now cornmeal-side-down in the water. Use the flat slotted spoon. The one below is perfect. I think I got it at IKEA many years ago. But look for something like this so the bagel can rest flat on the spoon and water can pour off.

Let them boil for an additional 20 seconds on this other side. The water should keep boiling (the cool bagels will lower the temperature of the water for a bit so don’t adjust the water so it’s not boiling). Remove with the slotted spoon and allow them to drain on a cooling rack with paper towels placed beneath. Boil the next bagels until all the bagels are on the draining rack.

Throw out that cornmeal-covered aluminum foil and place down a sheet of parchment paper and the damp bagels (you only need to let them drain for a minute).

This is the point where you will add any topping. You can sprinkle on dried onion or garlic (I get both in the bulk section of Whole Foods–do not use undried onions or garlic), sea salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or cinnamon sugar. Or make this mix to sprinkle over the bagels.

The Stirrup Queen’s Everything Mix

1 tbsp dried onion
1 tbsp dried garlic
3/4 tbsp sea salt
1 1/2 tbsp sesame seeds
1 1/2 tbsp poppy seeds

Place i
n the oven for 14 minutes. It may take a bit less or a bit more time–make sure you check. The tops should look like this:

And the bottoms should look like this when they’re done:

Which brings us to full sheets of bagels that look like this:

Or this:

Yum! Allow them to cool for a bit on the parchment paper. And then eat.

Any leftover bagels that won’t be consumed that day should be sliced in half and frozen in ziplock bags once cool. Bagels will only toast back to their pre-frozen freshness. If you want a toasted bagel that is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, freeze immediately. If you’ll eat the bagel within 24 hours, store in a paper bag.

If you freeze them: take out a bagel and wrap it in a paper towel. Put it in the microwave for 30 seconds and then unwrap and discard the paper towel. Place in the toaster. And then…eat…once it comes out of the toaster. It will be so soft and crisp. It will be bagel love.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you blog about trying out this recipe: thetowncriers@gmail.com.

READ WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THIS RECIPE

• No Swimmers in the Tubes made cheddar bagels and rosemary olive oil bagels.

Does it make me a bitch if I’ve separated out the Costco-sized bag of Halloween candy into the undesirables and the desirables and kept all the desirables for myself while giving children like the LBWWMTDASADFFIHAOTAC the unwanted Baby Ruths and Almond Joys?

I need the M & Ms more than he does!

New List Today AND a question at the bottom:

Once again, welcome to the seventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: Happiness Sold Separately
Author: Lolly Winston
Start Date: September 19
Post Dates: October 29th and 30th
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Happiness Sold Separately).

Group B:

That Was The Plan (Ms. Planner)
A Little Sweetness (Meghan)
All Things Deb (Deb)
Waiting for…? (Amy)
Road Blocks and Rollercoasters (R&R)
Where is My Happiness? (Bean)
The Open Door (Deanna)
Fatty Pants (Fattypants)
Outlandish Notions (Sharah)
The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
No Swimmers in the Tubes… (Noswimmers)
Fertilize Me (Farah)
Baby Steps to Baby Shoes (Baby Steps)
Desperate to Multiply (Portia P)

Even if you haven’t read Happiness Sold Separately, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #8 is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Even if you read this book a long time ago, I promise reading it again with a book club will make you see it in an entirely new light.

The Details: Tour #8 will start October 31st (spooky!). Participants will read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. On Tuesday, December 6th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on December 7th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on December 10th–12th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #8, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon and we’ll be voting soon on the book tours for the winter. Happy reading.

NEW BOOK CLUB IDEA:

You know the idea of spinning plates? I’ve been mulling over the idea of spinning books. As I’m putting together the voting list for the next tours, I’m thinking of all these great books that are the opposite of an IF/pg loss book. The ones that give you an escape from everything that is going on. And beyond that, I actually do read books that are not infertility-related (gasp!). Jasper Fforde, chicklit, random Booksense bestsellers. I want to read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, but I don’t want to read it in a vacuum. And I love you guys. And the Barren Bitches Book Brigade rocks. What do you think of a spinning book group? Each tour would become eight weeks long, but the two books would spin at the same time. You could drop in for either one or both. So every four weeks (as opposed to every six weeks), there would be a new tour and it would switch off whether it was an angel (non-IF book) or devil (IF-book) tour. If it gets too crowded, I’ll start a spin-off site where we can discuss/run both tours. Yes? No? Maybe so?

Welcome to the seventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: Happiness Sold Separately
Author: Lolly Winston
Start Date: September 19
Post Dates: October 29th and 30th
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Happiness Sold Separately. We’ve broken down the current tour into two groups. A new list will be posted tomorrow).

Group A:

Stirrup Queens (Mel)–my post is below this one
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
Sticky Bean (Kristen)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
The Dunn Family (Erica)
Candy’s Land (Candy)
Mommy Someday? (Michelle)
Blood Signs (Wordgirl)
Precious Little (Carrie)
Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
Conceiving is Believing (CiB)

Even if you haven’t read Happiness Sold Separately, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #8 is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Even if you read this book a long time ago, I promise reading it again with a book club will make you see it in an entirely new light.

The Details: Tour #8 will start October 31st (spooky!). Participants will read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. On Tuesday, December 6th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on December 7th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on December 10th–12th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #8, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon and we’ll be voting soon on the book tours for the winter. Happy reading.