Sesame bagels

I've been making a lot of focaccia recently, so I decided it was time to add some new recipes to my bread baking repetoire. First up was bagels. I thought that it would be a pain to boil and then bake the bagels, but it actually wasn't too bad. Peter Reinhart's recipe from Bread Baker's Apprentice is pretty straightforward. First, you make the sponge which sits for about two hours to expand and get bubbly. Then, you add the rest of the ingredients (bread or high gluten flour, salt, and barley malt powder or syrup). Afterwards, you make 4.5 ounce rounds out of the dough, shape them like bagels, and then they go in the fridge overnight. In the morning, the bagels go directly from the fridge into the boiling water. I used a large deep skillet, so I was able to boil 4 bagels at a time. The bagels are baked in a very hot oven for about 10-15 minutes. They are definitely an improvement over store bought - the outsides are crispy and the insides are soft and tender. My only complaint is that the sesame seeds didn't stick that well. The recipe says to top the bagels with seeds immediately after they come out of the water, which I did, but next time I think I'll use an egg wash.