The Unexpected Edification I Received from a Bagel

When does learning end? Many of us believe learning ends the day they hand us our diploma or degree. As a matter of fact, we are learning every moment of our lives but we are so busy focusing on other things, to miss the lessons being taught to us.

On 14 February 2024, Valentine’s Day, I was live streaming on how to make homemade bagels to save you money and I learnt a very important lesson. Bagels are lean yeast. Meaning you are not using a fat, like oil, milk, or butter to make them. Fats in bread has two primary functions. One function is to slow the rising of the dough. The second, most important, it helps to soften the bread. When making bagels, the sought after texture is more of a chewy versus soft and by adding fat means your bagels will be soft instead of chewy. From a cost perspective, since the recipe does not require fat to make it it means, to make homemade bagels the cost is minimal (bread flour, water, salt, yeast, and sugar). When you already have the ingredients at home the cost is around a £1 for 8 large bagels versus £5 – £7 or more for a dozen.

bagels #2 out of oven
copyright (2025) by Berry Photography (R) all rights reserved.

While making the bagels, the biggest challenge I faced was the boiling water bath. The first one I put into the bath, fell a part, which is the bagel in the lower right corner of the above photograph, leaving a side relatively thin. Because the bagels use barley syrup in the dough and in the bath, they came out already tan. This made it a bit difficult to know when they were done and ready to come out of the oven.

When the bagels finally cooled and I could cut into one, I found the texture was somewhat unexpected. I am used to store bought bagels that are relatively soft and easy to cut. These were a little bit of a challenge to cut it but with a sharp bread knife, I had no issue cutting it. The insides we soft and no major air holes, which left me pleased. Then when I bit into it, the texture was chewy with a hint of barely to it, which made it very delicious.

So how long did it take me? From start to taking them out of the oven it was just over 2.5 hours but if I was strict by closely watching my dough, I would estimate probably closer to 2 hours in a warm kitchen. In this journey, I allowed the dough to double in size in over 2 hours when, it could have taken closer to 60 to 90 minutes.

As I reflect back on this experience, I do have to wonder if I have over knead my bread dough leaving it a bit more chewier than necessary and I wonder, if I let the bath boil too long before turning it down. Even if I knead it properly and the bath water did not boil so long, this experience taught me one thing about life, it taught me about confidence, being able to draw on my previous bread making experience to making a new type of bread. Making bread, is a journey because you are always learning and discovering new things about yourself.

If you make homemade bread, what has making bread taught you about yourself and life?

My remarkable journey of making sourdough

sourdough bread boule
copyright (2025) by berry photography (R) all rights reserved

Every journey starts some where. As a pure novice to sourdough breads, I started my journey. My first sourdough was frought with problems that ultimately led to a bread that was unproofed and could be used as a door stop because it was so hard. When I made my English Muffinsthis week, I had some extra starter and tried my sourdough bread, again. While not 100% ‘spot on,’ it was a significant improvement. This article will explore the changes I made.

sourdough starter
copyright (2025) Berry Photography (R) all rights reserved

Starter

As I analyse the situation I note that my kitchen is on the warm side, running around 75 degrees Farenheit. Though, I do question, if for a part of the time with my first loaf, if the kitchen was cool under 70 degrees Farenheit. This led, at times, for my starter to ran runny and not growing as quickly. So to fix it, I had to vary the ration of starter, flour, and water for the feed. I found a 1 part starter to 2 parts flour and 2 parts water worked quite well and sometimes 1 parter starter, 1 part water, and 2 parts flour worked. However, if I used the latter then an extra stir was need about 1 – 2 hours later to ensure all of the flour got mixed and a 1:1:2 ratio was only needed for a day because the started would not rise if I kept using the 1:1:2 ration. What I found that was critical was ensuring the flour was fully mixed and I did feel the temperature of the water was also a factor. So, I tried to keep the water cool and not too high as it led, I feel, to a runny starter.

Making the bread

Once the starter was doubling in size, it was time to make the bread. The first time I added the starter to flour and salt it was a bit sticky. Relying on my previous bread making experience, the stickinees made me thing more flour was needed and I added a bit more flour. The second time, the flour soaked up the starter water mixture and was overly dry. So, again relying on previous experience, I thought water was needed.

As I look back, I do question if my intervention (adding more flour the first time and adding more water the second time) led to the results.

Both times, I found that the bread did rise quicker than expected. The second time the bred was showing it was being underproofed and I did make attempts to save it. First attempt was to do more stretching of the dough, which did make it less sticky. However, after letting it rest, it became sticky again and this time I did put it in the fridge for about an hour. After the hour, the dough was expected.

Cooking the Bread

The first time, I put it into a 5 quart dutch oven and covered it. When i took of the lid, the dough appeared somewhat flat and translucent. After it finished cooking, the first attempt the dough was so hard, I could not cut into it.

However, the second time, the dough did rise, it did have a few bubbles, and it slight browned when I took off the lid to the dutch oven. So, I cooked it without the lid. This time the dough did rise and it did brown. When I did cut into it, the dough looked a bit undercooked and a bit dense. Nonetheless, it is a significant improvement from my first attempt.

sourdough bread boule
copyright (2025) by berry photography (R) all rights reserved
sourdough bread slice
copyright (2025) berry photography (R) all rights reserved

My takeaways

From my first two experiences, I have learnt kitchen temperature, mixing ratio, and to some extent the temperature of the water used influences the starter. I do expect my next attempt will mean further improvement on my journey in making the ultimate sourdough bread.

Learning Patience and Expecting the Unexpected from Making Sourdough

A common theme that I talk about the connection between bread and the lessons life teaches us. Bread can be traced back to ancient times and it is recorded in Torah, see for example Numbers 15:19 -21. I will talk more about the Biblical connection when I do my live stream on Challah bread making 27 March 2025.

Moving on, talking about bread it is importnat to remember bread is universal. Meaning it sustains human life and sustains human civilization. Without bread, life as we know it would be alot different. Bread too, before it is baked, is a live. Yeast, feeds off of the sugar in the flour and in the dough mixture resulting in the production of carbon dioxide, CO2. The how much and how quickly the yeast produces CO2, depends on several factors like the quantity of salt in the dough mixture, the temperature of the room, temperature of the water, the amount of water, and the type of flour to name a few. These environmental factors along with other causes the bread to rise and the rising influences both taste and texture. In many ways making bread is analogous to life. It is the ingredients along with environmental factors that influence development. Sometimes, the interaction between environment and ingredients lead to unexpected results.

When I did my first pizza dough and pizza live stream, it did not turn out exactly as planned. From that experience, 2 weeks later showing resilience I once again made the dough and pizza. I did it to show, even with careful planning, much as you plan yeast breads do not always go as planned. In this situation, factors outside of my control and inaccurate measuring led to some unexpected results. Using what I learnt from my first experience, I was able to over come it.

I took that experience and started my next journey, sourdough. On 26 January 2025, I made sourdough bread. This journey was a bit different. I made a sourdough starter and it took longer than I expected to grow. I feel the reason for not growing as quick as I expected is due to the kitchen being on the cooler side, like between 68 and 72 degrees farenheit. As I stated in my video I had reservations about the float test but I did the float test. My starter floated and so, I believed, it was ready. When I baked it, the bread came out hard and did not rise as expected.

I believe there are probably three reasons for this. First, even though my starter floated, I don’t believe it was ready. Second, I used a bit of flour because the dough was extremely sticky and this may have made it more dense. I still debate this because, the dough did not feel, to me, as though too much flour was added. Instead, I come back to the starter and wonder if it did not rise as much as I thought it did. Third, the dutch oven I used was quite large and when I formed the dough it was much smaller.

Out of the three reasons, I feel there were issues with the dough rising and rising issues come back to the starter. During my live feed in just over a week, on sourdough English muffins, I have created a new starter using a different approach.

From my sourdough experience, the life lesson I learnt was patience. Sourdough takes time to grow and to make. Also, from this experience another lesson I would say prepare for the unexpected. In this experience, I thought everthing would go as planned, even though I had some initial concerns. However, after I took out the finished product, it was not what I was expecting.

So, from my two dough experiences, I have learnt patience and resilence.

When you make your own dough, what do you learn?