RECIPE - Ramses III Bagels

Last week, over breakfast, I was gazing at a painting of bread making from the wall of the tomb of Ramses III. I noticed with happiness the possible similarity between how bread was made just over 3,000 years ago, and how bagels are made these days. That is, they're not just baked, they're boiled first, then baked.

I put my phone down and tried to think of other foods that are made by boiling first then baking. Nope, couldn't think of any. There probably are some, but I've not come across them yet. I looked again at the tomb painting, and recalled eating bagels a couple of years ago in Montreal, and then years before that in Krakow, after a week long hiking trip to the High Tatra mountains. Ancient Egypt...Canada...Poland...I love it when I see evidence of bridges between us all, and in food those bridges are pretty numerous if you dig a little. Look up 'bagel' online for 5 minutes and there’s a clear Jewish lineage to East Europe that dates to about the 17th century. Look online for 5 minutes more and you’ll start to see bagels that are called something else but are certainly connected to the bagel idea, being mentioned centuries earlier. Then look a little more and, for the romantic dreamer, a great journey through time and space starts to form.

The bread making paintings on the walls of Ramses’s tomb were made just 150 years after the supposed date of the Exodus. So as I sat there drinking my coffee I proposed to myself that this ancient method of baking bread was already in use at the time of Moses, and that the knowledge of it was carried out of Egypt by the fleeing Jews. Of course, it may well have been carried out of Egypt by traders, or soldiers, and perhaps, even carried into Egypt much earlier in time by the same methods. 

Study ancient texts and you’ll come across mention of ‘The Western Lands’ which were referred to as old even at the beginning of written history. Scholars are still unsure what these lands were. The afterlife? What became known as Berber country? Atlantis? Or perhaps another civilisation that had flourished before global warming and deforestation extinguished so much of life in the Sahara? Maybe this method of cooking bread came from there? Why not?

So this method of making bread pops up on the tombs of Ramses III around 1155 BC, and then resurfaces about 2,400 years later in Arabic texts, then later still we see it appear in Jewish texts hailing from Poland, and from there the bagel gets more settled in history and travels to North America where it changes slightly according to the place it lands - New York, Montreal, St Louis, and Chicago, as well as many other cities and regions.

I decide to try to make a batch of bagels by funneling all this influence into one recipe, using a variety of sources. My usual method of creating recipes is to scour a few websites, some of which might be more history or travel based rather than strictly food based, and get ideas on which to build. The main links that helped me with this recipe are as follows:
My Recipe

I put 5 cups of brown flour into a bowl, then added 1 tbsp baking soda, 5 tbsp ground flax, and 1 tsp salt. I mixed it well.

In another bowl I poured 1 500ml can of Guinness, 1 tbsp lemon juice, and ¼ cup pomegranate molasses, and gave it all a good stir. Then I poured the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients.

I mixed it all by hand so that it was all well combined. The dough was a little bit dry so I wet my hands and began to knead it. That made it wet enough.

It didn’t need much kneading, just enough to combine everything well. Then I put the ball of dough into an oiled bowl and placed it in the oven with the light on for an hour. You could also put it beside a sunny window, or in an airing cupboard if you have one. You just want a warm place.

I planned to leave it for 12 hours as is usual with bagel or beer bread dough but after an hour I saw it had risen nicely so I took it out, tore the dough into 6 pieces, and rolled it out into long sausage like pieces. It was quite dry so I oiled my hands and spread a little oil on the work surface and that got it moving well. I brushed the top of each long piece of dough with oil then rolled each into a spiral, like a cinnamon bun, and put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, with each end of spiral resting against the next bagel to keep them coiled together.

They looked sturdy but not very well held together so I thought they might come apart in the boiling water and I’d be left with mini baguettes. But I got the water boiling and gave it a go. 

At this stage I could have added sugar, or malt syrup, or pomegranate molasses, to sweeten the water and therefore the bagel crust, as they do in Montreal. But I just kept it as water, as I don’t want to add more sweet to my diet.

I boiled each bagel on it’s own for a minute each side. They sank as I put them into the water but floated to the surface after about 30 seconds. They did look like they could unravel if I was too rough with them, but I handled them carefully with 2 large spoons and they were fine.

I put them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, sprinkled the tops with sesame seeds then put them in the oven for 18 minutes total. The temperature was around 400F. I checked them after 15 minutes and decided to give them a little more time.

They came out fantastic; substantial and tasty.

I’ve since tried making them with a regular pilsner beer, and divided the dough into 8 and 10 pieces to make smaller bagels. The rise was the same, the taste was similar (the difference was slight and not noiceable to me when topped with any spread)

I have also tried making them in the more traditional bagel shape, hollow in the middle. They're fine, you get about 12 bagels out of the mix if you do that. They're just as good but I rather like the ancient Egyptian spiral shape, and they take up less space in the oven when there's only 6 or 8 tight coils as opposed to 12 to 14 bagels, which is a consideration if you've a small oven (I have). 

I ate them first with peanut butter, topped with stewed apple. Superb. Instead of just being a carrier for the toppings the bagel was the main attraction, and they held the toppings well (the spiral shape doesn't allow toppings to fall through the middle of the bagel, which for me is a win!). 

A final note is that you can play around with the ingredients to a certain extent. You don't want to add too much extra or the dough won't hold together as well, but 1/2 cup of chopped dates, raisins, dried apricots, figs, or black olives, mixed into the 5 cups of flour before you add the liquid ingredients, has worked well for me. You can also top with something other than sesame seeds, such as black cumin/kalongi, sunflower seeds, or chopped nuts. 

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