The Cook’s Illustrated team came up with a very effective bagel recipe for the home kitchen. When I use it, I deviate from the instructions in two ways. I knead the dough by hand since I don’t have a KitchenAid mixer, and I don’t use high gluten flour, instead concocting my own by adding some Bob’s Red Mill vital wheat gluten to King Arthur’s bread flour.

Eight bagels doesn’t seem like a huge reward for the effort involved, but once you have been through the process two or three times, it is fairly simple. A mixer would help, since the dough is very stiff.

Since the formed bagels are refrigerated for eight hours before the boiling and baking, the work is divided into two short sessions. That means you can have freshly baked bagels for breakfast in about thirty minutes.

Even when an experiment ends with an imperfect loaf of bread, it is still rewarding. It almost always tastes wonderful.

I miss working on “real world” projects; my days are spent writing, talking, thinking, answering the phone, and generally putting out fires involving email. Lots of email. Baking is a chance to break out of the routine, enjoy the process, and simply do something different.

Over the last few years I have been making bread using a slow-rise method I read about in the March/April 1994 issue of Eating Well magazine. The ingredients are simple enough – water, flour, salt, a little yeast, a little sugar. The result is a large loaf of French bread that tastes good, keeps well, is easy to make.

I have learned a few things about getting the most out of the recipe, in terms of texture and flavor.

• Don’t let the dough rise quickly. You really do want 10-12 hours of fermentation.
• Don’t under bake the loaf. Frankly, I have never baked the loaf so long that I wished I had removed it from the oven sooner.
• Remember the salt.
• Feel free to form it into whatever shape you like.