Bread Adventures - Bagels! and Thrive in Five Day 4

 Slow and sluggish getting up this morning... I think some of my problem is allergies - mental note: change air filters.... I need to make sure it happens monthly!    Itchy watery eyes (but NOT DRY :-), thank goodness... sneezing and sniffling... it was VERY hard to get out and walk the dog today.  Lately though, my husband has been going with me... how EASY it would be to just let him do it!  But I'm kind of proud of me, I didn't do that!

*****Thrive in Five**** .... Update Day 4

www.HannahKeeley.com

Taking charge of emotions.  uh-oh.....I am STRONGER than my emotions..... wow.... yeah, I know, I've been saying it for a while but it sure feels good to have somebody say it to ME!  Hearing Hannah's voice really helps me more than I thought it would.   I have been working a LONG time on loving myself... on NOT beating myself up.... on recognizing truth and deciding to make changes - rather than bemoaning my fate and whining about it. (Okay, I admit it - I still whine :-)

Much of the work we do on setting goals and living our best lives requires us to change up our thinking.  It requires us to be responsible for the direction of our thinking... NOT ignore our feelings - but recognize them for what they are - and CHOOSE how we wish to respond.

What I FEEL... what I DESIRE.. right now.... might not be the way I TRULY want to LIVE my LIFE..... it takes a little work and a little trust to figure that out... Join me and make the decision TODAY to live a healthy life.

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And...... on to my Bread Adventures as I bake my way through Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg & Zoe Francois  Bagels.... this is funny :-)

What a hoot!!

I am such a clown in the kitchen!  Making the dough was easy.... getting up the nerve to make the bagels took a few days!

First, you break off a piece the size of a small peach.... okay - well, that size is a moving target in my head.  I've had this problem before when choosing between a ball of dough the size of a cantaloupe... or a grapefruit.  Unfortunately (or not), I live in America, the super-sized... I have seen both of these fruits in various sizes.  It helped a lot when I knew that the batch of dough made either 3 loaves (canteloupe-sized piece) or 4 loaves (grapefruit sized piece).

In this case, my dough was supposed to make 20 bagels... but my 'peaches' only got 11.   More on that later......  I made some BIG bagels :-)  Lesson learned late!

After my little balls rose for about 20 minutes... I had to boil them..

Dropping them in the boiling water was problematic (because they were monster-sized).  But I marched onward.... they sure looked weird to me after boiling......

Then they had to drain on some dish towels sprinkled with flour.  I THINK the flour was supposed to keep it from sticking - didn't quite work well for me.  Or maybe I have the wrong kind of dish towel or something... anyway.. it was a tricky process and I ended up with some really gummed-up towels.

Then to bake...baking time increased substantially since they were so big (and I wasn't sure what they were supposed to look like)....

In the final analysis... they tasted like fresh bread out of the oven and that was all good.  They looked like small loaves of bread with holes in the middle... oh well.... I tried..  BUT I didn't have fun so I will probably not make bagels again..

...except..... oh no.... there are more bagels in the book.... maybe practice will make it easier :-) Because I AM going to get through the book :-)

I did enjoy the challenge of creating the bagels ....  I was told that these look like gourmet bagels that this person paid $8 for.  Maybe so.. I never saw an $8 bagel :-) (people pay $8 for a bagel?)

The same dough will make something called Bialys and also soft pretzels...

 The dough is already made and waiting for me.. so maybe Bialys tomorrow?  Hmmm.... wonder what THEY look like...