SIMIT BAGELS WITH OLIVES (VAREN GJEVREK SO MASLINKI)

 
One of my favorite kind of bagels are those with olives. This was my first attempt to make them at home and they were great as for the first time. As all dough recipes, we improve them and we improve ourselves as cooks with experience. That is why, for example, I have several bagels recipes on my site, meaning, every next recipe is better than the previous one.


Ingredients:
  •     around 2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup plain flour and 1 cup wholewheat)
  •     ½ teaspoon salt
  •     1 teaspoon sugar
  •     20 g fresh yeast
  •     2 tablespoons oil
  •     ½ cup warm water
***cup size is 250 ml

    To dip the simit:
  •     1 tablespoon honey boiled in 1 glass of water
  •     sesame seeds as needed
Preparation:
  1. Dissolve the sugar and yeast in the warm water, mix and keep aside for 3 minutes.
  2. In a bowl, add 1 cup of flour, salt, and the oil. Mix well. Add the yeast mixture and start kneading. You can use the mixer with dough wires attached at first and knead by hand in the end. Add the other 1 cup of flour gradually as needed.
  3. Mix and knead for about 10 minutes until you get a non sticky dough. Cover and leave in warm place to double in size for about 1 hour.
  4. From this dosage, I got 6 medium sized bagels. So, divide the dough into 6 equal pieces.
  5. Dust the working surface with flour, using your hands form a long rope from each piece, then flatten it, arrange cleaned olive pieces along the middle of the flatten rope. Then close the rope and swirl it and join two ends together to form a circle, press the ends firmly to seal.
  6. When all bagels are formed, boil the water with honey and dip each bagel to boil in water for 20 seconds, then immediately take the bagel out and dip in sesame seeds and align on the baking tray aligned with baking paper.
    Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Bake bagels on the middle rack for about 20 minutes or a little more.