Day 2 Argh blergh feffingrump grump grump

Hmmmm so my budget doesn't include coffee... I've been meaning to ween myself of the jitter-juice basically since I started drinking it 4 years ago. Day 1 of no coffee = grumpy headachey Holly, sigh

I'm taking my frustrations out on Bagel dough. I've been craving Montreal style bagels ever since I moved and so I've decided to attempt my own.

Pre bagel shaping counter pounding

This is also spurred on by the fact that the awesome, weird little health food, Chinese fast food (NO MSG!!), bakery near my house sells flour in bulk for $0.20/100g. I bought a dollar's worth and made 8 bagels. Boom!!

I also bought a bag of sesame seeds to garnish these bad daddies, 332g $3.75!

I used a recipe I found on epicurious.com but skipped the last 1-2 days of rising step because their recipe is for New York style bagels and I wanted Montreal style which are less puffy. For the second rising I did 30 minutes pre-poach. I also don't have any parchment paper to line my trays with so I've greased them and I'm going to dip the post-poached bagels into a tiny bit of cornmeal (ain't it just the most useful thing?). Hopefully this will keep them from sticking.

Okay so it turns out dipping slippery, wet, boiling hot bagels into cornmeal and then transferring them to a pan is an infuriating task. I did four like that and then for the second four I sprinkled the cornmeal directly onto the baking pan before putting the bagels down, so much simpler.

Also my kitchen seems to have misplaced it's slotted spoon... I bet it ran off with the handle to my large pot, the slot (this being an attempt at a pun with slut)! Anyway there may be a couple small puddles on my baking sheets.

Note for future bagel attemptees, slotted spoons should be found before the bagels go into the poaching liquid. Ah well next time.

Ah Ah AH!! Smoke detector!! Oh ugh the cornmeal on the stupid pan is stupid burning!!

I so badly want a cup of coffee right now, you have NO idea.

Ooh they're so pretty! And okay billows of dark smoke aside they're not stuck to the pan so maybe I am a culinary genius after all. A cold culinary genius with every window and door in her apartment open.

First bite, SUCCESS!! So yummy I could eat all eight right now, but I won't. That would defeat the purpose of meal planning on the cheap.

They are a little puffier than the Montreal ones I've been craving and I think next time I would make 12 out of the recipe instead of eight. They seem kind of unnecassarily large. But I'm happy with the result and DEFINITELY making these again.

Lalalelala caffeine withdrawal headache almost gone or at least kind of forgotten.