Bagels and Broccolini

I just finished making the bagel recipe from Bread Baker's Apprentice. I haven't tried one yet, but they look gorgeous and very authentic. It was a bit of a baking fiasco at first though. I always use my Kitchen-Aid because I'm too lazy to knead. I dumped everything into the bowl and got all set up to let my mixer do the work. Just before I switched it to on, my husband called from work. Always in a rush (for no particular reason this time), I figured I could multitask and went ahead and switched it on. Flour went everywhere. Much foul language was uttered with my husband on the other end of the phone. He didn't even bother to ask. I don't think he wanted to know. In hindsight, obviously, I should have given it a little stir by hand to moisten the flour. Oh well, I got it all cleaned up and got the mixer going again. It was really struggling, and I hadn't even put in all the flour that the recipe called for yet. I finally gave up and kneaded by hand which I have to say wasn't really that bad. I tried adding more flour that way, but that didn't really work then I think I had it too dry and had to add more water. I must have measured something wrong along the way. Finally, the recipe asks you to fit two cookie sheets full of bagels in your fridge overnight. I have a normal-sized side-by-side (which I would never buy again!), so there's no way even one was going to fit. I misted a couple of freezer bags with spray oil and put the bagels in those. When I took them out of the fridge this morning, it looked like they were all going to be horribly stuck together, but they ended up separating just fine - a bit misshapen, that's all. This is another bagel recipe that I had been making. It's pretty quick, doesn't require the overnight refrigeration, fits in my mixer, and has gotten rave reviews from my family. On the other hand, everything else I've made from BBA has been way better than any other bread I've made, so I'll have to see. (Oh, before I forget, more of a reminder to myself than anything . . . two other kinds of breads I want to try to make that aren't in BBA are pita bread and raised donuts.) Very exciting news to report in the garden. On of my broccolini plants is starting to flower. I think that the flour is the part that you eat. I tried to take a photo, but the flower part is so small the camera couldn't focus on it. (I'll have to try the manual focus tomorrow.) Oh and I did make the hummus I mentioned in yesterday's post. It was delicious, but you definitely need to top with the red pepper oil to get some spiciness.