Carbo Loading - To The Max!

In an attempt to know all of the ingredients in the food that I eat (and be able to pronounce them) I've started making my own bread AND bagels!

My first bread attempt resulted in a dense loaf that had a particularly gluten free bread taste to it - which is strange because I actually added gluten to it to make up for not having real bread flour (a tip I picked up from a few bread making websites).

I'm still eating this loaf, so it's edible but much too dense for my liking.

The bagels I made on the weekend turned out much better. It turns out bagels are pretty simple to make but just take a bit of time and patience.

I got the recipe from this website, it appealed to me because of its simplicity which I enjoy when making something new.

You start by making the dough and then separating it into 8 pieces to let rest for a little while:

Then you roll the pieces out into snakes, make it into a loop and roll it out. The website I linked has a video!

Then you let them rest again and this is what they look like, not too much difference:

Once they have risen you put them into a bot of boiling water, 1 minute on each side which seemed strange to me - putting dough in boiling water but here we go:

This is what boiled bagel dough looks like!

After a quick trip in the oven this is what the bagels looked like - not burnt, hooray!!

And another look, why not:

After all of that work (which really just too more time than effort) Greg made some yummy breakfast sandwiches from my bagels:

It think knowing what is in my food definitely makes it taste better. This was one yummy meal!

I made the bagels on Saturday and apparently I didn't meet my bread quota for the weekend because on Sunday I busted out the yeast and flour and was at it again. This time with a different recipe, from Jamie Oliver's website.

Pre-risen bread, apparently cutting it down the middle helps with the rising:

Where I kept the bread on on and off to help it rise. This is one toasty warm heater:

A sneak peak at the rising bread:

The finished product, this bread was lighter but still really hearty. It could be lighter still, it's not that fluffy bread I'm hoping for. I'm going to keep at it!