Bagels

I know I've already posted about the past 24 hours, but ate something that was pretty good today and wanted to share.

We went to my parents for lunch today. While the Babe didn't eat much (oh what fun a picky food-allergic toddler can be), I enjoyed lunch. My mother attempted to make bagels. While the texture was hard, the taste was good. She followed a regular bagel recipe, substituting King Arthur's Gluten Free Multi-Purpose Flour (which I've never tried before, but will now). The recipe is detailed, and one of the steps required boiling, and then baking. The first bagel put in to boil apparently fell apart, so the rest just got baked. She thinks it was the high baking temperature that caused the texture issue, although I think it may have been because there was no xanthan or guar gum in the flour dough or recipe. Either way, they were tasty, just had to watch how I chewed them. And this is not a criticism of my mother's baking. Experimenting with gluten-free, dairy free, and egg-free recipes can be challenging to get the right taste or texture. Not all foods can be exactly replicated, and to get baked goods to be the correct texture, its not just as simple as replacing equal parts of alternative flours.

So now that I have something that could lead to an addiction (they really tasted good, have I mentioned that?), I'm going to have to make some. But I don't want to "proof" or knead dough. Silly me- I have a bread machine for this purpose! One day soon I will attempt to make bagels, using the machine to do the hard work to make the dough and then bake them in the oven, and will let you know how it goes. Right now I'm too tired to contemplate when that day will be, but it will happen... eventually.