When is a bagel not a bagel?

GF Bagels - notice the texture and the shape and thickness.

I would like to talk to you about my recent experience with gluten free bagels. I have great sympathy for my friends who for a variety of reasons no longer include gluten in their diet. Of course, bakers now make incredibly delicious cakes, cookies and brownies using an assortment of gluten free flours, and I have a smashing recipe for gluten free brownies that I use as my “go to” for potlucks. But what about the gluten free bagel?

So I am risking the good will of many when I say that a gluten free bagel is an oxymoron. Yes, that is right, what is said to be a bagel cannot actually be a bagel unless it contains those strong protein strands that ultimately leave us chewing with great zeal as we bite into the bagel.

When I first started baking bagels I thought about my friends who refrained from trying Sherry’s Bagels due to the gluten. Several people asked me to make GF bagels so I launched a review of recipes and started on my journey. I saw a show with Paul Hollywood (Great British Baking Show fame) where he visit a gluten free bakery and summoned up the courage to endorse the baked goods, even stating he could not tell the difference. He didn’t try a bagel.

My first trials for making GF bagels were a disaster. I used the King Arthur 1":1 GF flour and the bagels sunk to the bottom of the pot when I plopped them into the boiling water. They looked like hockey pucks, and after the bake, they could function as paper weights, that is if we still keep paper in the house. As I quickly learned, 1:1 GF flour is good for non-yeast baked goods. such as muffins, brownies or cookies. I should note that the flavor wasn’t bad but the texture was simply something I just couldn’t stomach.

I continued to test recipes and found a British video on You Tube with a fairly simple recipe but with wonderful directions and clear illustrations for better understanding texture. I followed the recipe as precisely as possible and found that my lovely little bagels that I sculpted together floated nicely in the water. They had a tinge of gumminess, but my GF friends all told me that the texture was as it should be for GF products. I made several batches of these bagels and received high praise. I started to get more requests for the GF bagels.

I wondered about baking a product that I myself wouldn’t eat.I also wondered about my own inexperience with GF products. I decided to do some market research. I bought some GF bagels from the store (frozen) and that was an utter waste of $8.00. When I went to San Francisco I paid a visit to the Mariposa GF bakery and ordered one of their bagels. The bagels were round and they had a whole, and that’s where the resemblance ends. I noted that the bakery bagel texture transcended the gumminess but what I was eating did not taste like a bagel. One might say that these bagels were for the birds; I literally went out on the promenade and fed the seagulls.

I decided that I would not try to make a better GF bagel, or even replicate the ones that seemed to be acceptable to others. I felt like I was defaming the bagel. I remember when tofu tamales came to Santa Cruz back in the 1980’s. My husband, who grew up on homemade tamales and particularly fond of pork could not accept this new vegetarian culinary creation into his world. “That, he would say, is not a tamale”. I suppose I am drawing the line in the sand with the GF bagel. THAT IS NOT A BAGEL.

But in all honesty, I really don’t want to be a purist of an elitist about bagels.. My decision about not making GF bagels is a decision coming from the heart. I love the bagel making process. I love how I knead the dough, and how I roll the dough into a bagel shape; this is not how I experience the GF bagel. As I said to some friends, I feel like I’m sculpting and using Play Dough when I work with GF flour. I’m all about process and for this reason, I want to pass. What do you think?