Bagels

One of my classmates from high school posted on Facebook that she made her own bagels. It had never occurred to me that I could make my own bagels. They seemed too fancy to make and I had no idea that I could. I looked at the recipe and it was easy. There are many steps, but the end result is perfectly delicious!
Sorry about my pictures. I don't have a lot of light in my kitchen and took 41 pictures just for these ones.

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 1/4 cups warm milk or water (I used half water and half milk.)
1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk
3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

Instructions:
In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm milk. Add the butter, sugar, salt and egg yolk. Mix well. Stir in enough flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top.Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.Punch dough down. Shape into 12 balls. Push thumb through centers to form a 1-in. hole. Place on a floured surface.Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Flatten. In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil. Drop bagels, one at a time, into boiling water. When bagels float to the surface, remove with a slotted spoon and place 2 in. apart (I did less than that and they were fine.) on greased baking sheets. Boiling the bagel makes the special smooth texture on the outside of the bagel.
After boiling and ready to go in the oven.Bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.
Halfway through baking.All done. The lighting is bad, but this is how they looked.Remove from pans to wire racks to cool. I've never eaten a warm bagel before, but YUM! They are so good! I think this recipe would work well for pretzels too.

I made several smaller bagels and several bigger normal sized ones. The smaller ones were perfect for Vincent to hold and just the right amount to eat. I made 13 bagels total. I'm going to double the recipe for the next batch. Everyone loved them!
The batch I took pictures of is a doubled batch. It made 28 bagels. They are slightly smaller than the average bagel, but perfect for us. I love using my special $5 bagel cutter that I found at Big Lots years ago. It's product name is Ronco, so anytime we use it we say "Ronco!" over and over.