Proper Food Meets Sauce Pots
In this series of posts, I will introduce you to some of my favourite food bloggers in Ireland. For the first installment, please meet Alice, she is the award winning creative genius behind Sauce Pots .
Alice, how did you come to blogging?
Food Blogging is a full-time job in itself, and quite an undertaking, but I don’t regret one second of it.
Food has played a huge role in my life since I was a child. I’ve always loved it, probably to a level I shouldn’t, but who cares? Life’s too short to do anything less than enjoy yourself. My love of food led to me establishing my blog SaucePots.net, as a means of not only logging my culinary exploits, but sharing them with whoever fancies reading, or cooking, them!
And what are you going to cook for us?
I was always a weirdo when it came to food. Between going for sushi and oysters for my 10th birthday, to racing crabs up the garden (in hindsight, that was a bit weirder than anything else…), I’ve never been a picky eater. One regular treat in my house, however, was bagels. That might seem a little strange, but there were certain basic foods that were highly sought after in my house. I grew up in Co. Laois, which is dead centre in the middle of the Irish countryside. Every now and then there would be trips to Dublin, where we would get our hands on one of our favourite treats: Onion bagels from our favourite bakery (it has since turned into a restaurant, so I won’t bother with the details!).
Once these bagels had been secured, there would be fights over them – who would get the half with all the toppings? Who got the last one? This went on for a while until, inevitably, the pack was gone. After years of dealing with this system, nothing was left but for me to learn to make some of these bad boys myself! I could never figure out how to make them exactly like that bakery did, packed to the brim with onions, but I absolutely love these bagels – and I hope you will too!
Slice ’em, toast ’em, and butter ’em up good!
So what’s the recipe then?
Ingredients
- 500g strong white flour (bread flour)
- 2 tsp dried yeast
- 1.5 tbsp sugar
- 300ml warm water
- 1.5 tsp salt.
- 2 tsp honey
Method
- Add the yeast and sugar to 100ml of warm water in a bowl. Leave to stand for 5 mins, until the yeast had frothed up a little. Stir to dissolve.
- Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre, and pour in the yeasted water.
- Pour the remaining 200ml of warm water into the well.
- Mix the ingredients to form a dough.
- Turn the dough out on to a floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes, until smooth, elastic, and very firm.
- Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turning it gently to coat the dough in oil. Cover with a tea towel or cling film and leave to rise at room temperature until doubled in size (1-1.5 hours).
- Once risen, knock back the dough and leave to rest for 10 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7.
- Cut the dough into eight equal sections, and shape each piece into a ball.
- Form each ball into a ring by piercing the centre with a floured finger or handle of a wooden spoon. Swirl the finger or spoon in a circle to stretch the dough and widen the centre hole.
- Place each bagel on a baking tray lined with greaseproof or baking paper.
- Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Add 2 tsp of honey to the water, and stir to dissolve.
- One at a time, boil the bagels in the water for 1 minute, flipping them over half way through. Use a slotted spatula to remove the bagels from the water and place them back on the baking sheet.
- Brush each bagel all over with egg white and top with sesame seeds.
- Bake for 20 mins in the preheated oven, until the bagels are a deep golden colour. To be sure they’re done, they should sound hollow when you tap the bottom.
- Remove the bagels from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.
You can read the original blog post with Alice’s recipe for New York Style Bagels here.
3 Comments
Lovely concept. Delicious food and excellent photos.
Best,
Conor
Thanks C. Looking forward to your entry 🙂
These bagels look amazing! Looking forward to trying them 🙂 Well done, lovely collaboration!
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