ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä

Saturday morning at the YMCA, three folks stopped me to tell me that they read about my misadventures in bagel making. A man told me about how much he missed ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Bagel on Capitol Street.

“I used to stop there two or three times a week,� he said.

He liked the jalapeno bagel, too, but light on the cream cheese.

A women told me she could tell by my pictures that my second batch was certainly more “bagel-like.�

I agreed. The first couple of batches looked like arts-and-crafts failures from a dull afternoon at summer camp.

“It’s a work in progress,� I told her. “I just need to figure out how to get the dough around my monkey paws.�

“Well, keep at it,� she said.

I told her I already had another batch of dough sitting in the refrigerator. The soon-to-be bagels had been mixed, proofed, sliced into strips and rolled into mostly round rings.

They looked better than previous attempts, though still a little rough around the edges. I had trouble getting the rings to stay closed.

Then a suggestion from a reader came in for how to make more bagel-looking bagels, along with a little tough love.

He wrote:

“I cringed when I read your bagel story.

“To make authentic New York bagels you don’t need any additives to your boil or dough. Ingredients should be flour, yeast, salt, sugar and water.

“Use good kosher salt. Don’t skimp.

“Ten minutes of kneading is key for the right texture.

“Don’t skimp on water. Your dough should be very soft after kneading. If it’s too dry, it won’t rise properly.

“Cover the dough tightly with plastic film or use a proofing bag for an hour. Keep it warm — at least 75 degrees.

“Punch it down until all the air bubbles are gone. Then let it recover for about 10-15 minutes before shaping.

“Instead of the rope-rolling method, try rolling the dough into a ball and sticking a floured finger into the center and twirling it around until the hole is the right size.

“Make sure your water is fully boiling and in a large-enough pot that it will keep boiling after you drop the bagels into it.

“If your bagels do not initially sink when dropped into the boiling water, the dough has too much air in it, either because it is too dry or it was not punched down enough after the first rise.

“If your water is boiling properly, two minutes on each side is plenty.�

A lot of this, I was already doing — and he was probably right about some of the additives.

After several batches, I wasn’t sure that I really needed the malt powder. The malt was for flavor and color, anyway, and maybe didn’t help with an onion or jalapeno bagel.

But I did get the recipe from the New York Times cooking section.

I’d have thought they might have some good thoughts on bagels and when I’d boiled my bagels in unseasoned water, the bagels had tasted a little flat. So, I wasn’t sure about not using salt and baking soda.

Still, I really liked the reader’s suggestion about making the rings less like hula hoops. I was terrible at rolling the ropes into circles.

And I did use his suggestion on time for boiling the rings. Two minutes on each side, I think, gave me that chewy texture I wanted.

The results were so good, I sent my sister Laura a picture. She had a vested interest.

“Yay! Bagels at the reunion,� she texted back.

With that, I felt like I’d become good enough with the bagels that I could move on to scones.

Nearly all of the books I’d picked up from Kanawha County Public Library had some recipe for scones.

Scones, I think, sound like a weird passion for me. Just the word itself smacks of a sort of refinement and manners that don’t quite match up with my carefully cultivated, oafish, beer-swilling persona.

But along with being kind of a goon, I’m a fan of things like high teas and picnics where everybody shows up dressed in white to eat cucumber sandwiches and scones.

I have never actually been invited to any of these things and probably couldn’t pull off the required costume to attend, but I like the style — which is overly fussy — and the ability to speak with a British accent.

None of the recipes in the books seemed particularly challenging. They all seemed well within my middling skill level. This worried me a little.

Making bagels had been a weird experiment in kitchen chemistry with plenty of things that could go wrong.

You mix ingredients and then let the dough rise for one or maybe 24 hours. You have to watch the clock.

The mixture is boiled and then baked.

If you want to add sesame seeds, poppy seeds or toasted onion bits, you have to put those on after the bagels come out of the water, but before they go into the oven.

Basic scone recipes don’t ask for that much. I just had to toss ingredients into a bowl and turn on my mixer. Once the dough began to look like dough, I was supposed to dump it out on the counter to knead and shape before popping it in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Next to bagels, scones are relatively lazy.

The ingredients aren’t all that fancy, either. The scones don’t require anything I didn’t have in my kitchen, except for sour cream, which is readily available at my local grocery store.

No fees for shipping and handling required and I already had the raisins.

And I expected it all to go completely wrong.

After I made the first batch and put them in the oven, I kept out all of my ingredients. I figured that if this attempt fell apart, I’d just start over right then. Flour is cheap and I had plenty of baking soda, baking powder, salt and raisins.

But after 18 minutes, I pulled open the oven door and saw a dozen nearly perfect-looking raisin scones. The shape and color looked right. I could’ve made them a little bigger, but that was a minor thing and easy to do next time.

The scones had barely cooled before I took my first bite. The taste and the texture were dead on.

I liked them so much, I ate three of them (they were small, honest).

My scones were good enough that it forced me to reassess my favorites list.

What I made at home was nowhere near as good as anything along the same lines that I got from ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Bread on Capitol Street or Sarah’s Bakery on Bridge Road. The scone I had at the coffee shop in Buckhannon a few years ago was much better, too.

But fourth place on my first try wasn’t bad.