Mmmm, bagels

Happy New Year all! What better way to start off the new year then with a fresh bagel. I know. That's why I made them this morning. I hadn't made bagels in a few months and realized that I hadn't shown them on the blog yet, so I decided to illustrate the process. King Arthur flour has a few different recipes for bagels, but the one I like best is their recipe for Water Bagels. The recipe makes 16 bagels, about the size of Lender's bagels, not too big, but satisfying. I made 8 cinnamon raisin, and 8 everything bagels, using my homemade everything bagel topping.


For the cinnamon raisin bagels, I placed the raisins in a dish, and plumped them up a little with some warm water. The second dish is cinnamon sugar.

 This is the everything topping. KAF sells their own, but I had all the ingredients already so I made my own. It includes sesame seeds, poppy seeds, garlic powder, kosher salt and dried onion flakes.

A key component to making good bagels is non diastatic malt powder. KAF has recipes for bagels that use brown sugar instead for the boil, but I think the malt makes the bagels more, well, bagel-like. I haven't been able to find it elsewhere.

So I made the dough as directed, though I can't seem to use all 5 3/4 cups of flour that is called for. I used just under 5 1/2 cups to get a nice dough.

The dough was cut in to two pieces, and the flavorings were kneaded in. I sprinkled the everything topping onto the counter and kneaded it in, then did the same with the raisins and sugar for the other batch.

The topping gets added in, though you won't be able to get it completely evenly spread into the dough.

This dough looks almost good enough to eat! But now in to the oven to rise.

Here are the doughs after their rise, which took about an hour and 20 minutes.

Now to shape the bagels. First each dough is cut into 8 pieces, as even as you can get them. I bet if I had a scale they would have been even :( Oh well.

 Next, shape them into balls. The way I do this is simple, yet hard to explain. Flatten the dough out a little, and choosing the smoothest side, shape the ball so that the smooth side is facing up and will be the top of the bagel. Here they are shaped, ready for the second, short rise. Whatever you do, make sure you place these balls of dough on greased parchment. It will be so much easier when you go to make the holes in the dough.

After about 40 minutes, the bagels are ready to be shaped and boiled.

While you are shaping the bagels, the boiling liquid should be heating up. I suggest having two batches if possible, and getting 8 into the oven at a time. The longer the boiled bagels sit and aren't baking, the worse your bagels will be. That's not to say they will be bad, but they seem to start to fall if boiled, cooled and baked. The outer crust looks dimply, believe me, this happened the first time I made bagels.

Okay. To shape the bagels, all you have to do is stick your index finger into flour and stick it into the center of the ball of dough. Once your finger is all the way through, pick up the bagel and move it around, making the center hole as large as you want, about an inch in diameter.

Now for the boil, this recipe calls for 30 seconds on each side. Once they are back on the cookie sheet, they should go directly into the oven.

The bagels should bake for about 20-25 minutes. For the everything bagels, I took them out 2 minutes before they were done, brushed them with water, and then sprinkled on the everything topping and popped them back into the oven for the last couple minutes. They came out really well. I had to break into one while they were still hot. So good. Make bagels!