Anyway, any suggestions as to how to make them come out better, why they are too dense? Anyone ever hear of shrinking bagels? Did I overwork the dough? Were they undercooked? Also, why does this recipe have you supplement the sourdough culture with yeast? And does it matter what kind of yeast I use? The recipe doesn't specify. I used ADY. Should I have used IDY?

To boil, I added baking soda and honey to the water (a mix I found on another site). The water was very foamy, and it was difficult to see the bagels in order to flip them. I haven't seen any recipes that mention this issue... They boiled for about a minute a side, maybe a little more. The bagels looked fine when they came out of the oven. After cooling on a rack, I froze half of them and put the other half in a plastic bag. I didn't eat any until today. When I took one of the bagels out to toast today, I could swear that they had shrunk. Is that possible? I didn't measure them, but I remember thinking that they were large looking bagels when they came out of the oven, and today they looked small. Anyway, they were a bit disappointing. Too dense, almost like they were stale. And they looked like they might be undercooked. I did cook them at 500 for 25 mins, as per the recipe. Maybe next time I will use my thermapen to test doneness before taking them from the oven.

I've been learning about sourdough bread baking, and yesterday I decided to try my hand at sourdough bagels. I used the adaptation to Peter Reinhard's NY bagel recipe for making sourdough bagels. I used the same sourdough starter that I've been using to make bread (the SF starter from sourdo.com) to make the sponge, and the sponge was very active by the time I mixed it in with the dough. I Used KA bread flour. One possible issue was that I might have overworked the dough. I mixed for 15 minutes with my KA Artisan stand mixer (325 watts). This seemed like a long time, and really worked my mixer. It was struggling, and got very hot. After mixing the dough and forming the bagels, I did the "float test", and they did float. Then I proofed overnight in a 38 degree fridge.

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