People seem to love homemade bread. Period. Full stop. I’ve got several theories as to why. Some of them have to do with knowing what’s going into your body. Some of them have to do with the sheer bliss that smelling bread baking seems to bring to people. Still others have to do with people thinking it’s hard and feeling touched that you’d make it for them. I used to be in that latter school of thought myself. Then I started baking and was amazed at how simple most breads are.
Most of the work in bagels turns out to be in the first day. Once everything is all risen, the boiling and baking goes like gangbusters. 
On day two, I got all the stuff together for toppings. Feedback on those has been that everything is yummy, but since one housemate has some serious restrictions on seeds, there should be less seed-based bagels next time and about three times as many Asiago cheese bagels. To the right we have, clockwise from upper right: kosher salt, blue poppy seeds, grated Asiago cheese, sesame seeds, Artisan Bread Topping , and rehydrated dried minced onion. The bread topping, onion and salt were combined to make my version of an everything bagel. Those came out the prettiest of the bunch.
I don’t remember eating bagels until I was at least a teenager.
They weren’t a big thing around my East Tennessee hometown. White bread? Yes. Cornbread? Hell yes. Biscuits? With every meal if possible. But bagels? Not so much.
The first time I had a bagel, I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought of it and my very first question was “How do they make it shiny and chewy like that?” It was a while longer before I found out that the answer was “They’re boiled.” At the time, that seemed a little weird to me, but I wasn’t going to complain.
Baking is chemistry and biology and math all rolled up into one and it produces yummy things to eat. What more could a nerdy girl want?
Sourdough is wonderful stuff. It seems sort of magical to me. You take water and flour and stick them together. And then you add more water and flour. And more water and flour and before you know it, you’ve got this stuff that will make bread rise. This is fascinating to me. But, then, so is most of baking.
When I decided to do sourdough, I looked at about a million and a half ways to make a starter. Some of them had half a dozen or more ingredients to get started and they seemed like they were just a little too fussy. The simplest ones had just two ingredients (flour and water) and a couple had just three or, at most, four. I ended up using a hybrid of a couple different starter methods.
Before I go into what I did and why, I’m going to give a quick rundown on why sourdough actually works.
Most yeast-risen breads use some sort of commercial, storebought yeast. It comes in little packets or jars (or if you’re like me in one-or-two-pound bricks), it’s pretty inexpensive, and it’s generally foolproof if you pay attention to the dates on the container. Sourdough, on the other hand, relies on wee beasties that are living naturally on flour and in the air. They’re just about everywhere and they just need a little care and feeding before you can harness them to do your bidding.