October 20, 2014
On Saturday, I took my regular early morning walk around the block
with my sister and came home with a hankering for cinnamon raisin bagels. So I decided to carve an hour or so out of my
day in order to make a batch. Now, anybody
with gluten sensitivity knows that a decent gluten-free bagel…or any good gluten-free
bread, in general…is as scarce as hen’s teeth.
However, months ago I set out to develop a bagel recipe of my own that
was at least half way edible and wouldn’t fall apart during the boiling process. After much trial and error, I’m happy to say
that I’ve had some success.
Most bagel recipes are pretty much the same…mix some kind of
flour, liquids, and some kind of leavening agent to make them rise then boil
and bake them. On my first few attempts,
using published recipes from the internet, the bagels wouldn’t rise at all and
always broke apart during the boiling process.
So I added an extra egg and more xanthan gum to keep them from breaking
apart. I also added all of the leavening
agents I could think of…yeast, baking soda, and baking powder. Though they were better, they broke apart
during the boiling process.
Finally, I decided to add a tablespoon of milled flax to the
recipe and that made a huge difference in the texture of the bagels. I’ll be the first to say that my bagels are
not like bagels you’d buy in a store, but they are edible. My sister, who is also trying to go
gluten-free, actually likes them and asks for some whenever I bake them. I’m including the recipe under the
“Gluten-Free Recipes” tab above. If you
ever get a chance to try this recipe, let me know how it works for you.
Since the “magic ingredient” in these bagels seems to be flax,
I’ll give you a little back ground on that wonderful ingredient. Flax is a food and fiber plant that grows in
many countries all over the world. (As
it happens, I attended the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival in late September
this year and a lady was there demonstrating how to spin yarn from flax fiber. She grows it on her farm in New Hampshire
There are many benefits in adding milled flax to your diet. It is a good source of fiber and plant
protein. Flax is one of the richest
plant sources for Omega-3 fatty acids.
Many doctors are now recommending that their patients add Omega-3’s to
their diet to help fight heart disease.
Studies have also shown that flax is beneficial in preventing colon
cancer and breast cancer.
Flax can be added to many foods…bread dough, pie dough, pizza
dough, smoothies, soups, stews, chili, oatmeal, meatloaf, casseroles, breading
for fried chicken, and many more. I have
found that milled flax seed is especially useful in making gluten-free dough
more flexible. (Now I don’t spend so
much time cussing the dough as I’m trying to move it from work surface to the
pan.)
There are many plants that can individually be converted into either
food or fiber or industrial solutions or medicine, but the flax plant can be
converted into all of these products. The flax plant, in my humble opinion, is one
of the most useful plants in all of nature.
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| Milled flax seed. I had to put it into a zip freezer bag because "Mountain Woman" (me) opened the bag with a little more force than was really necessary...and, yes, it did spill on the floor. |
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| The front of the flax bag (purchased from Costco in the bulk size). |
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| The back of the bag, explaining the benefits of flax. (1 serving of flax = 2 tablespoons, 70 calories) |
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| The bagel-making process...raw dough (shown on the right), boiling the bagels three at a time (in the middle), and ready to go to the oven on the baking sheet (on the left). |
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| Fully baked (nice and brown) cinnamon raisin bagels! |
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| A quick shot of Jax snoozing in my chair...not sure, but I think he likes his new home. |
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