Sprouted Grain Bagels

The photos are finally up!  These are the sprouted grain bagels I mentioned before and hopefully some of you got to try a bite!  I came in early Sunday to try one, toasted it up and put a little butter on it, and see how it was.  The bagel had a very subtle sweet aftertaste but with little sprouted grain flavor coming through.  It was a little of an up and down ride from the excitement of a great looking final product to a let down from final flavor that just doesn't meet your expectations.  Don't get me wrong it was a good bagel, just not 'the one' I want it to be.

So this means more testing!  At this point I need more Sprouted Grains which will be the next post, What are Sprouted Grains and why should I eat them?  Personally they just taste much better, but I will actually give some facts to support my opinion!

Now, this bagel started for me about 6-7 months ago when I was a Teaching Assistant at The Culinary Institute of America.  My Chef was very good at randomly just dropping thoughts and ideas to let me chew on and see what I did with them!  One day I was working on a Sprouted Grain Sourdough and he just mentioned, "could you imagine a Sprouted Grain Bagel?"  He left it at that and never said anything else about it.  So the thought process began and all the questions floated in!  Can I just add the grains to the regular bagel dough?  Should I just wing it and see what happens?  Wait, what about salt? Grains will need more salt.... How much more salt?

And the recipe began.  I tested it out every Friday for my early morning Saturday bakes and ran into a lot of hydration issues and salt content issues.  The Sprouted Grain mass is fairly sticky and wet but not runny so its a weird trade-off for flour and water!  But as the weeks went on and I gave the test runs to all my surrounding Chefs to try and get feedback.  I started to refine the recipe into a great product.  A few weeks before I left my position at The CIA, there was a large baking exam at the school that we needed to produce some specialty products for breakfast and lunch and I figured what better time to break out some yummy bagels.  There happened to be some very well known bakers there for judging and they got to experience The Sprouted Grain Bagel in all its glory!  That bagel that morning came out fantastic, size, shape, color, and the flavor where all exactly where I wanted them to be!  This was an exciting day for me and I got some really good feedback on the bagel,  I was fairly proud!

After all this I expected it to translate over to wherever I wanted to break this bagel out again. Unfortunately, yours truly,  did not put my final changes down on paper!  Bummer, I know but that has just led to more R and D here, which is great but with a limited supply of Sprouted Grains!  So now the process starts all over again from sprouting to grinding to baking!  And you get to be brought along for the whole shindig! Photos galore and hopefully helpful info galore!  I have recently contacted some of my previous Chefs to see where I can get some very reliable and accurate info on Sprouting Grains for you and we will have a few different posts on this topic!

Make sure you stop by the bakery and see what we have going on!

Have a great Monday!
Josh