making bagels

The other night I mentioned to someone that I had made bagels for the first time over Easter weekend.

“Soft bagels?” she asked.

Apparently she had pretzels on her mind. Unfortunately, it happened to be a very appropriate question. Bagels are supposed to be soft and chewy, but I managed to bake a not-so-soft batch of the World’s Chewiest Bagels. I wouldn’t exactly call them tough… just ridiculously chewy. They tasted good and the process was fun, but the overall outcome left a bit to be desired.

Ever since writing “make bagels” on my list of 101 Things in 1001 Days, I’ve been hoping to find someone who has made them before who could give me some tips. No luck. People think it’s a great idea, and they’ve all said that if I learn how to make bagels, they want my recipe and advice.

(This feels like a weird, inverse version of the Little Red Hen. Nobody said, “I’d love to help you eat the disappointing results of your bagel experiments,” but everyone wants to enjoy the final results of my quest to master the art of bagel-making.)

Lacking a bagel tutor and finding exactly zero recipes for bagels in my cookbook collection, I headed to the internet. As expected, my Google search yielded too many bagel recipes. I didn’t have a clue which recipe would lead to the perfect bagel, so I just looked through a few recipes and picked one.

In spite of the variations in recipes, the basic process is pretty standard. You create a batch of dough, knead it, and let it rise. Next you shape it into round balls, poke your thumb through the middle, and try to get it to look like a bagel.

How did I do? 🙂 That’s what they looked like after letting them rise again. Next you cook them in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. It’s kind of like making donuts, except that donuts are boiled in oil — a.k.a. deep fat fried. Different bagel recipes indicate different lengths of time for the boiling, so I’ll have to experiment with that.

Next you brush the bagels with egg yolk (to make them shiny), add seasonings if desired, and bake them. The recipe I used said to bake the bagels for 35-40 minutes. I checked them after 25 minutes and they were already overbaked.

Looks can be deceiving. They’re beautifully golden brown, but eating them gives your jaw a workout. Next time I won’t bake them as long! Once I’ve come up with a good basic bagel recipe, I’d like to experiment with different kinds of dough. Eventually I’d like to be able to replicate my favorite bagel from the local bagel shop — a sundried tomato spinach bagel. Mmm.