Greek Celebration Bread and Bagels

I have to say I am really enjoying this. There is something about making things from scratch that is so completely satisfying. It is almost addicting.

Greek Celebration Bread

This bread was quite fun to make and pretty darn easy. One of the best parts was how wonderful it smelled during the whole process. It was a good bread for the fall because it had wonderful ingredients like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and all spice. I had no idea what is was going to look like because there was not a picture in the book. We all laughed pretty hard when we saw it.

Finished Loaf

I loved the delicious sweet glaze you put on it. It has lemon in it. We took the left over glaze and whipped it with some butter and slathered it on the bread.

It almost touched the roof of the oven!

     Just thought I would put it next to a sauce pan for comparison sake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next week was bagels. Holy crap it was quite the job. I was surprised how labor intensive this one was. The main issue I had with this one was how tough the dough was. I always use my kitchen Aide to knead the dough but after smelling a burning smell from my machine I decided to do it by hand. I had to grab a small latter just so I could put more weight down on the dough by being higher.

  It took me quite sometime to get all the dry mixed into the dough. This is all my machine pretty much did. I seriously was sweating kneading this dough. It was a crazy workout.

Shaping the bagels was actually pretty fun. Thomas and Sam got to help and they did a great job. Sam made his pretty flat but it still turned out really good.

I notice the dough dried out really fast so I had to make sure I covered it with a damp cloth.

The next day I boiled and baked. I was really nervous they were not going to float like the are supposed to. But the did!

My favorite bagel at Einsteins is the everything bagel, so I decided to do some everything, some cinnamon, and some plain. On the everything I put sesame seeds, poppy seeds, garlic powder, salt and Parmesan cheese. Yummy!

The main problem I had with these is when I had to remove them from the wax paper. I don't know it anyone else had this problem. I think I needed to add more cornmeal because about half stuck!

  

So after I finished I said never again on bagels then we ate then and I thought well maybe:) They were delicious!