Lately my baking adventures have been taking me places I’ve never been. I’ve made a number of things that I never would have thought to make before. Last week I made a batch of homemade bagels for the first time. YUM. I used this recipe. They weren’t too terribly hard, especially if you’ve already got experience making homemade breads, or if you’ve made pretzels. They’re actually quite similar to pretzels. This difference, I think, is that you don’t add baking soda to the water with bagels, and you boil bagels longer than you would boil pretzels. Most of the process is the same. I’ve made my share of breads and pretzels, so these really weren’t too difficult! I won’t go through the entire step by step process, because you can find that in the recipe above, but I will give some tips and advice.
I followed the recipe linked to above, and then split my dough into 8 pieces. To make different flavors out of one batch of bagel dough is actually a lot easier than you might think! All you have to do is mix your ingredients right in. I suggest dividing your dough before mixing anything in though, because it can sometimes get a little crazy if you try mixing it in too soon (especially with wet ingredients like blueberries).
Divide your dough into 8 pieces (or more, or less, depending on the desired size of bagel). Take your ingredients and mix them in.
Suggested flavors:
Cheddar onion: a handful of shredded cheddar cheese per bagel (plus more to top it with after it boils), a couple pinches of dried onions
Blueberry: a small handful of dried or frozen blueberries (be careful, they can be wet and ruin your dough if you knead them too much. Mix them in just enough so that the berries aren’t exposed, then form your bagel)
Orange cranberry: a little bit of orange zest and a small handful of dried cranberries
Blueberry lemon: a little bit of lemon zest plus some dried or frozen blueberries
Cinnamon raisin: coat the outside of the dough ball lightly with cinnamon, then knead in a small handful of raisins.
Cinnamon sugar: coat the outside of the dough ball with cinnamon, then knead it into the dough. When it’s done boiling, top with a mix of cinnamon and sugar (you can dip the top of the bagel in it, or just sprinkle it on)
From my experience with bagels so far (I’ve been making them at work now, so I’ve gotten a little bit of bagel experience lately!) you don’t want to over-knead once you’ve got your ingredients mixed in. Frozen blueberries will get very messy and cause your dough to fall apart. You want to just barely incorporate them into the dough ball, form your bagel, and then boil it. If you over knead it, the blueberries will start to defrost and cause the dough to get wet and slimy, which is very difficult to work with!
These are the bagels after the ingredients have been kneaded in and the bagel has been formed. To form the bagels, you can either:
1: roll your dough into a ball. Press it flat, and then poke a hole in the center. Gently stretch the hole in the center until it is larger than a quarter (it will instantly shrink back some)
2: Roll your dough ball into a long rope. Form a ring, overlapping the ends by about an inch. Knead the dough slightly to get it to stick together (or else your bagel will fall to pieces while it boils!)
Once your ingredients have been mixed in and your bagel has been formed, let it rest for about 10 minutes. Pop your bagels into your boiling water for 2-3 minutes, turning halfway through. This can be somewhat tricky to figure out, depending on what flavors you have. If you’re working with small quantities, it might be a good idea to have a different pot for each flavor bagel. The onion bagels will flavor the water, and the blueberry bagels will turn your water black. The cinnamon will also flavor the water a little bit, so if you’re working in one pot for multiple flavors, you may want to think it through before starting!
Once your bagels come out of the boiling water, brush them with butter. This will enhance the flavor and it also helps your toppings to stick.
Once your bagels have been brushed with butter, either sprinkle your toppings on (cheddar, cinnamon sugar, poppy seeds, etc) or you can dunk them right into the toppings (like for cinnamon sugar).
A blueberry bagel after it’s been boiled. It looks rather bloated and unappealing.
Blueberry bagel after baking. Now THAT looks GOOD!
I hope my post has given you the inspiration you need to go out and make some bagels! They can be a little tricky, but the reward is delicious!
