Welcome friends, welcome back to the kitchen
Today we're going to make montreal-style bagels and my whole plan for this video
Was to go to Montreal for the weekend visit a couple of the really good
Bagel shops there show you the process kind of get an idea of how they're made and then come back here and make them ourselves
but of course
you know Covid happened can't do that, and I didn't want to wait until
We could go to montreal. So I thought i'm just gonna try it flat out
So I had St-Viateur send me a box of bagels
And so this is a Montreal bagel completely different than a new york-style bagel in that they're handmade
They're cooked in a wood fire oven. They are boiled in a honey syrup or
malt syrup
First before they're baked
The process is a little bit different in that. There's no second rise
You kind of get a bulk ferment at the beginning, but it's not really there also flipped during the baking process
So both sides of the bagel ends up on the hearth and gets toasted a little bit. It's kind of really cool
Now this recipe
Comes from a bunch of research that I've done over the last couple of years and from asking
Endless questions while standing in line at the bakery to the point where I'm sure the bakers are tired of me asking those questions
So I've been looking online trying to find recipes and none of them sort of jive with the things that I've learned at
the bakeries either St-Viateur or Fairmont
until I came across
recipe on a bread baking
Messageboard and the person who posted it there
Claimed that they got the recipe during culinary school their instructor had the recipe written out by hand on a flour bag
and it was the recipe from St-Viateur so
It seemed really plausible and everything in that recipe jives with what I've learned from standing in the bakeries
The only thing is it doesn't have salt
Which I think is a very interesting thing. So
In this bowl for the stand mixer I have flour
sugar malt and
yeast
Now this amount of flour is just on outside limit of what this stand mixer can do
So I'll probably have to do quite a bit of the kneading by hand
Next I've got water and it gets just a little bit of vegetable oil
one of the things I noticed at the bakeries is
That they add in dough from the last batch into the next batch and this is a bakery where they do
Continuous baking. It's open 24 hours a day
They're constantly making new dough. So
That might be part of the secret and I don't think I'm going to make them often enough at home
To actually make that work. So I'm gonna put an egg
I'm just gonna drop it into the water so that it all goes into the stand mixer at the same time
so raise the bowl turn the mixer on just to low and
Put in the liquid
And I'll let this go until a ball forms and then continue on kneading until it's nice and smooth
Okay, I'm gonna switch to doing it by hand because we are at the end of of what this machine can do and I don't
Want to change the gears again? Not that it was hard
It's just you know, why bother so I'm gonna finish
this dough
with a hand kneading and
So far the dough kind of looks right to me
When they pull the dough out of the mixer in Montreal it is this kind of dough
It isn't a high hydration dough
It is something that is pretty dry and not terribly sticky so you don't need any flour on your bench. Um
But I don't need with flour on my bench usually anyway
Just take your time and work it until it's smooth
And so I've got the fire started in the clay brick oven and it is heating up outside
Okay, I think we're good this has been about ten minutes of kneading by hand
And I've got a dough that is pretty nice the kind of looks like the dough you see
in Montreal, so at this point it gets 45 minutes of
resting time on the bench just
cover that in a little bit of plastic wrap so it doesn't dry out and
Stick the bowl over time for good measure
So what I have here is a pot of water
Just under a boil kind of at that point where it's just almost boiling but not quite
I've watched the kettles in Montreal. They never quite come to a full boil
So this is where I kind of want to hold it and to that I want to add
Honey, and so for every four litres of water, I think it's about a quarter cup of honey. Never got a straight answer
So I'm going to put that in see if I can get it to dissolve while I shape the bagels
It's great to have family members with
Beehives all kinds of great, honey
Okay, the big reveal
See if we can peel this off
Okay, the plastic wrap was a bit of a mistake
don't make that mistake just put a bowl over it and everything will be fine now to shape it I
Watched them and they make it look so simple and let's see if we can replicate it. They cut off ropes of
Joe
Which of course is easier for them because they're dealing with a hundred kilos of dough at a time
now
They roll it out
They pull it in around their hand like that
Pinch it off
Roll it on the table now
I think that's actually too small. My understanding is that they need to be about 85 200 grams
So I'm just going to weigh that and see where we are
75 grams, so I'm a little bit. Shy on the amount of dough. Let's see. How much dough is here?
Yeah, not enough, okay, so let's keep working we can do better
Cut off a rope of dough
And there we go
Getting better. Okay. Okay, so I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. I'm gonna cook these three and
See how I do so I'm going to cover the dough back over so that it doesn't dry out so I have three bagels here
The counter where I'm making them where I'm rolling them isn't floured but over here it is floured because I don't want them to stick
to the bench
into the honey water
Now the deal with the honey water is apparently somewhere between three and five minutes of cooking and
Whenever I've asked I've got a different answer. I think the real answer is the guy doing it
They're just nose, and they're not timing it they just know how long so you flip them kind of halfway through
Okay, I think we're good so I'm gonna take them out and put them out on a tray
They get dipped in sesame seeds both sides
And then put out onto this board that goes into the oven now. This is just a pizza peel that I've cut off the sides
The idea is that this goes into the oven and gets cooked on the board
For a couple of minutes before you flip it off on to the hearth so out the pizza oven
Okay, so they go in on the board and they stay on the board for the first couple of minutes
And then they get flipped onto the hearth
And then after they've cooked awhile you flip them again
Okay, first round
Problems the oven is too hot
I'm still having trouble with the wood oven getting the right temperature so you can see
One of them got a little charred the oven is definitely too hot but the other two actually look pretty good
So I need to monitor my temperature in the oven better
Now, let's go on to the next ones
Okay, while I'm fussing with the wood oven to try to get the temperature right we'll just continue on making some more bagels
I've also got the oven in here turned up to 400 degrees
Because you could just as easily cook them in your home oven on a pizza stone or just on a baking tray
So let's keep going. See if we can make this better
Hey glad so hey friends, um, the fire went on early this morning
It was a long day out at the wood oven now same picture. Mm-hmm
Me that's pretty good
Not too bad not too bad at all. There's a little darker but there's a lot of variation in their bag. Yep
So, I mean that one's there's a lot of variation in yours as well. No, there's a lot of variation. I'm
Because I'm only still learning how to regulate the heat in that oven
Version one version one came out
Pretty toasty that's better than version one when we did pizza. It says on fire like instant pot
So I think these these look pretty good. I'm bid you I'm excited
Okay, so I'm true Montreal bagel style. You just tear it in half. All right
Argan it's nice and soft
Chewy it's got that true. Mm-hmm
mmm, oh my
Good luck, that's pretty good. I'm I'm pretty happy with that
so
Obviously not as good
as
Standing in Montreal at Fairmont or Sanford sure and having them pull a trigger the oven and hand it to you
but I'm gonna say this is
This is a comparable bagel. Mm-hmm and you good, you know
Mm-hmm
Now our rate of production means that we're never gonna move to give them around for their money cuz this bakery
Because a thousand dozen bagels a day they run 24 hours and they're all made by hand
So there's one guy that just rolls the bagels all day long when someone else that just dips them and manages the fire
It's incredible to watch that getting crazy amount of crazy amount of work. A lot of people characterize a Montreal bagel as
Sweet in comparison to a New York bagel. Mm-hmm. I don't know that I wouldn't say this is sweet
But it's got something that a New York bagel doesn't have. Mm-hmm. I
certainly know Jenna SiC Wow
But this I'm
So I'm pretty pleased with these I would if you know if you want to try a bagel and you want to try a bagel
This may be a little bit different than the one that you get at the grocery store
Or the one that you get in New York City. Mm-hmm
This is a great bagel to try it you can do it in the oven
400 degrees takes about 12 minutes, or you could do it in a wood oven and
It's an all-day adventure about 400 degrees and you really have to manage your time to make them work
But and when you do in the oven to make sure that you flip them over
Because that's what that is one of the hallmark of
This type of bagel is that it's cooked on one side then on the other and then it just keeps getting flipped until it's done
so
Go to Montreal and have a real one
Because Montreal is a great city and you should all go there when it's safe to go there again
And in the meantime make these. Thanks for stopping by. See you again soon
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