Bagels - Day 2

So ever since I worked at the bakery I have been on a somewhat weird sleeping pattern, never being able to really sleep past 4 or 5 am. Some people think it's crazy, but one of my favorite things is being up in the middle of the night when everything is quite and still. So this morning I was up at 4:15 to pull the bagels out of the fridge to proof - and when I say proof, I basically mean the final resting/rising period for the dough in the fermentation process. This recipe called for the bagels to proof until they pass the float test which you can try after 60 or 90 minutes or so.
The float test is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: when the bagel floats in in cold water, it is ready for poaching and then baking. And as I said before, if you can mix some dough up and boil some water then you can make bagels. The poaching process is boiling up some water and adding honey, salt, and baking soda and then taking the water down to a simmer. After that, you poach the shaped bagels in the simmering water for about a minute on each side. Then place on an oiled parchment lined cookie sheet and bake according to the recipe - here it is about 8 minutes, rotate, another 8 minutes.
Once you get a solid recipe down for your basic plain bagel, have at it in terms of experimenting with different flavors. I've winged it on all the times I've made the Cinnamon Raisin and Asiago Cheese bagels in terms of adding the cinnamon, raisins, and cheese. I've found that the more liberal you are, the better. For Cinnamon Raisin, you add the cinnamon at the first step with the flour and then mix in the raisins as you are mixing the dough until you get a what you are looking for. For Asiago Cheese, you load on the cheese as soon as the bagels are done poaching.
I'll be playing with this recipe over the next couple of weeks and hope to post my own modified recipe for Chocolate Chip Bagels by the end of the month - probably for a batch of 12.