Make Your Own Bagels

I'm a purist when it comes to bagels. In my opinion, the perfect bagel is chewy with a thick crust and a tight, firm crumb. When the perfect bagel is sliced, there should be no crumbly bits that fall from the center. It should take a little bit of elbow grease to get the knife all the way through it. And please, please, please don't serve me a bagel with fruit in it. If you want blueberries, make muffins. If you want raisins, make cinnamon bread. In my opinion, there can be no debate. Fruit does not belong in a bagel. 

A few years ago, I decided I wanted to try making my own bagels. I was relatively new to baking my own bread and I knew this would be a challenge. I had recently met Bridget Lancaster from America's Test Kitchen and she suggested a website called The Fresh Loaf, which is where I found this recipe.  Making the dough seemed simple enough, but there were some interesting peculiarities to this recipe. First, it called for malt powder or malt syrup. Honey or brown sugar can be substituted, but I wanted to do this the right way. I went to a couple of stores, but could not find malt syrup or malt powder, so I had to settle for raw honey. Also, bagels are traditionally boiled, then baked. I've never done anything remotely close to that before, but what the heck, how hard could that be? Finally, the recipe takes two days to prepare. The recipe recommends making the dough and shaping it the night before, refrigerating it overnight, then boiling and baking the bagels in the morning and serving them for breakfast. I set aside a Saturday evening to make bagel dough that I planned to bake the next morning and serve with cream cheese, lox, sliced tomato, sliced onion and capers.

This recipe makes 12 to 15 bagels, depending on how big you like them.

Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant dry active yeast
4 cups bread flour
2 1/2 cups lukewarm water

Dough:
1/2 teaspoon instant dry active yeast
3 3/4 cups bread flour
2 3/4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons malt powder
OR
1 tablespoon malt syrup, honey, or brown sugar

Finishing touches:
1 tablespoon baking soda for the water
Cornmeal for dusting the pan
Toppings for the bagels such as seeds, salt, onion, or garlic - NO FRUIT!! 

I got a bit of a late start that evening. I didn't actually head into the kitchen until about 8:15 to start the dough. I made the sponge by dumping the flour and yeast into my plastic bin and mixing them up a bit. Then I poured in the lukewarm water and mixed until all the flour was moistened. I covered the bin with plastic wrap and let it sit for two hours. My kitchen was a little chilly that night, so I put the bin in a somewhat warm place, close to my oven, to give the yeast a welcoming environment. When I came back at about 10:30 pm, the sponge was nicely bubbly and sticky and ready for the addition of more dry ingredients. I added 3 more cups of flour, the additional yeast, the salt and the honey. The recipe recommended that the final 3/4 cup of flour get worked in slowly during the kneading process.

This dough was extremely stiff and difficult to knead. I tried working it with my hands in the bin first to get all the flour incorporated. That didn't work, so I dumped it out onto my work surface and tried to knead the flour in. That also proved to be ineffective. Finally, I broke out the Kitchen Aid and scraped all the crumbly flour into the bowl of the mixer. I managed to get the dough to come together with the Kitchen Aid and got the final bit of flour incorporated before the mixer overheated. I let the dough rest for about 10 minutes so the flour could absorb what little moisture was available and turned it out on the board again and started kneading. I ended up doing most of the kneading by hand, taking breaks periodically to let the dough and my arms rest. It gave me quite a work-out and after about 15 minutes of kneading, the dough was about as cohesive as I could get it and I felt like I'd just spent half an hour on the treadmill. 

According to the recipe, this is when the dough gets divided into 12 to 15 equal pieces. I decided to make a dozen bagels, dividing the dough into two parts, then six parts, then cutting each piece in half to make 12 pieces. They were far from evenly divided - some pieces were a lot larger than others, but I figured it would just have to do. By this time, it was well past 11:00 pm and I was exhausted. I shaped the dough into balls as best I could, given how stiff the dough was, and placed them on the work surface under a damp towel to rest. When I came back half an hour later, the dough was quite a bit more pliable and was starting to look a lot like bagels. At this point, I rounded, caressed and shaped each dough ball and finally poked a hole in the middle and lovingly shaped them into even rounds. This was the most relaxing and Zen-like part of the process for me. The pre-bagels went onto a baking sheet lined with waxed paper sprayed with non-stick cooking spray and got covered with plastic wrap. Then it was another 20 minutes before I could put the bagels into the fridge for the night. At 12:20, I put the bagels in the bottom of my fridge and dragged myself to bed. But sleep didn't come easily, I could not stop thinking about my lovely little belly-buttoned dough balls and how they would taste when I pulled them out of the oven in the morning. 

When the sun came up, I sprang out of bed and danced to the kitchen to put a big pot of water on to boil and get the oven heating up. This recipe requires a huge pot and the bagels get boiled in batches, two or three at a time. A tablespoon of baking soda gets added to the water to give the bagels that classic thick crust. I cranked the oven up to 525 degrees and took my bagels out of the fridge. They looked all plump and happy and I prepped two baking sheets with a generous amount of cornmeal to prevent them from sticking in the oven. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat patiently while my water came to the boil. When the water was ready, I dropped in the first three bagels. It only took a minute or a so on each side to boil these babies up right and I used a slotted spoon to turn them and remove them from the water. As soon as they came out of their Jacuzzi bath, they went onto the cornmeal covered baking sheet. The toppings get sprinkled on while the bagels are still wet. I sprinkled a few with coarse salt and a few with crushed garlic. Some I left plain. When they were all boiled, I put the pan in the oven. They only took ten minutes to bake and I rotated the pan half way through. I watched them cautiously to make sure they didn't burn.

The bagels were absolutely beautiful. It was so difficult to wait for half an hour until they cooled enough to eat. They were still pretty warm when I sliced into one, but not so warm that it melted the cream cheese. We had a traditional deli style feast with lox, fresh tomato, onion, capers, hot coffee and a game of cards. These bagels are worlds beyond any grocery store or frozen. If you have the time and inclination, making your own bagels is fun and delicious.