Bagels gluten and dairy free

Ingredients

500g urid lentil flour

500g tapioca flour

250g Doves Farm or other GF flour – more if necessary

2 eggs

¼ tsp yeast (more if in a hurry) Check GF

900ml water

½ to 1 tablespoon sugar / treacle

½ to 1 tsp salt (adjust to taste)

egg yolk for glazing if wanted

Options – add seeds to mix, or cooked onion, or any other flavour wanted

These are very good made with just the urid and tapioca flours. Doves Farm flour is cheaper so adding some reduces the cost, and at these levels the bagels are still soft and chewy.

Method

First Fermentation

Whisk urid lentil flour into water to make sloppy batter. If you add the water to the flour it is very hard to get rid of lumps.

Add yeast while at this semi liquid stage using the technique specified on the packet, and sugar or other sweetener of choice. Leave to ferment for several hours.

You can make bagels quicker by adding more yeast, but you may lose nutritional value from the slow fermentation producing changes in the bioavailability of zinc and iron. Traditional urid fermentation allows over twice the bio-availability of zinc and three times that of the iron[i]. This recipe is based on the Southern Indian Idli batter, where rice and urid lentils are soaked first, ground and then fermented for up to 24 hours using the natural yeasts. You can do this process but the flavour is less reliable – I once produced a fish-flavoured bagel batter and threw it away! I have tried bagels with the traditional mix of urid and rice, but found the tapioca worked better.

It can be useful to leave this overnight, then you have the whole day to manage the other stages.

Additional ingredients, shaping and second fermentation

Mix in eggs. If you can’t eat eggs or forget them the bagels will work without but they are not as good.

Add tapioca flour and salt (if desired). Leave fifteen minutes (the tapioca takes a while to absorb the water) and add just enough extra flour to make a dough that is handleable. Let the dough sit for a few minutes then shape into rings and place on floured surface. I like to make these with 125g of dough each as that suits my family. Make them as big or little as you want. I place mine on silicon baking sheet as it makes them easy to manage.

Leave to rise until nearly double in size. If they stick scoop off with plastic fish-slice. The surface was pitted but the texture better than if I stopped the rise while they were still neat.

Boiling

Place very carefully in boiling water. I ran test without the boiling and the crust was less good. I ran test of one, two and three minutes boiling each side – not much difference but think two minutes just a bit better than one. Turn over onto correct side before putting to drain – they look better.

Drain on a rack over a tray.

Brush with egg if you want a shiny glaze. If you want seeds to stick apply them when the egg is wet. If you egg wash when they are still on the rack you won’t get little pools of egg on the bottom of the bagel.

Baking

Place on oiled non-stick baking sheet or baking parchment. Bake about 180degrees C until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes. Place on cooling rack. Don’t try cutting them until they have cooled as the dough will tend to stick to the knife.

They are ok for a couple of days but the best thing to do is freeze them; then just defrost in microwave, toast if wanted and they are fine.

The same dough makes good flat breads/ pizza bases and even pan loaves if baked without the initial boiling stage.

---

[i] [i] European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2007) 61, 342–348 & 2007

www.nature.com/ejcn Influence of germination and fermentation on bio accessibility of zinc and iron from food grains S Hemalatha, K Platel and K Srinivasan