Sunday Bagels
This past Sunday I found my new favorite hobby; making bagels. A friend of mine gifted me a sourdough starter, and I knew my first project would be everything bagels, finished with thick cut applewood smoked bacon, and cheesy eggs.
I found that a lot of recipes don’t mention these two key steps, but they made the bagels stand out from the average:
Salt your boiling water! My friends kept talking about how perfectly seasoned these bagels are and I think salting the water helped alot!
Most recipes will call for you to sprinkle the everything seasoning on top of the bagel, but I fully dunked one side of my bagels into the seasoning. This adds so much flavor.
Follow along for the recipe!
Beginning the morning before I planned to eat the bagels, I fed my starter with 75 grams of water and 75 grams of all-purpose flour. After about 8 hours it was bubbly and ready to use.
At 8 pm, I made the dough:
3/4 cup bubbly starter
1 cup warm water
2 Tbsp sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
I mixed the dough, and then kneaded it by hand for about 6 minutes before covering it with a damp towel to rise overnight. This dough was tougher than a classic bread dough.
The next morning, I cut the dough into 8 even pieces. Ideally you would measure this on a scale, however I don’t have one in my small college kitchen. I rolled the dough into uniform balls and let those sit for about 15 minutes to let the gluten rest.
After resting, I used the end of a wooden spoon to poke a hole in the center of the dough balls, followed by forming the pieces of dough into the bagel shape. I found that kneading the dough into shape, gently squeezing as I moved around the ring of dough gave me best results. Again, I let the dough rest for another 15 minutes.
At this point, I began boiling my water, and added about a 4 second squeeze of honey and a pinch of salt (I don’t like to get my Tablespoon measure dirty for this, but if you want to measure, use 1 Tbsp.)
I boiled the bagels 4 at a time for 1 minute on each side.
Next, I coated one side of each bagel in everything seasoning, placed them on a cookie sheet, and put them in the oven @425 for about 20 minutes.
They came out so perfectly golden brown on the outside and chewy on the inside.
I filled them with perfectly soft and cheesy eggs, and good thick-cut bacon. I truly can’t think of anything more delicious, and I can’t wait to make this a Sunday tradition.
Enjoy!
