Do you like balls . . . or ropes 🪢 ?

How’s that for the worst come-on line ever ?!

Actually it could also be asked “Do you like snakes or balls?” Nonetheless it’s important info! It doesn’t take much investigation in the world of online “bageling” to find out that two very different types of bagel making exists and it matters which one is used.

Get onto YouTube and you’ll find tutorials a plenty showing you how to make bagels. Some boast “One-hour bagels!” or others state “easy does it bagels”. Baking influencers having provided a wealth of videos teaching some basics of bagels. But there’s one matter I found that seems to be quite ubiquitous amongst these influencers. And when I say “ubiquitous” I mean it. I saw an influencer from Japan doing this and another from Thailand. I confess this method is easier and by appearances from what I can tell even produces a plumper looking bagel. However what isn’t told is that this particular method also produces a less chewy, less texturally fulfilling bagel.

‘What am I getting my tidy-whities in a bind over?’ you may be asking. Easy - whether rolling out “ropes” or “snakes” is better than making balls and pressing your finger through those balls to make bagels. It’s the culture-crisis topic of our generation!

Balls and ropes OR snakes and balls ?! Oh the humanity ! I’ll confess the bagels that are made by dividing up a large dough mass into 6 or 8 concentric triangle-shaped dough parts where the points are tucked-in under itself creating a perfectly round dumpling-looking-ball look amazing. Next the baker influencer takes a finger and pierces the center of the ball from the underside creating a hole that is then stretched open and voilá - a dough bagel. When they bake they plump up and look like a cartoon tire. They look amazing! But believe it or not their taste is compromised.

You see the whole hand rolling processing REALLY does serve an essential component to the character of the bagel and not just for bagel bragging rights. If we could look deep into the bagel itself and look at what the gluten strands were doing we’d see that stretching them out - such is done when snakes are made - helps the gluten strands themselves become “seasoned”.

This seasoning translates into that flummoxing condition of a chewy, dense, extensible but airy and light bagel. A bread mystery. A baking paradox if you will. Merely rolling it into a dough ball then squishing a hole through it is like calling the Constitution a “nice essay”.