Today on Sugar Spun Run I'll be showing you how to make homemade bagels.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers Sam here and today I'm really excited to share this
yeast-raised recipe with you for homemade bagels. They are actually much
easier than you probably think, very similar to my homemade pretzels, if
you've made those before. So let's get started.
Now the first thing you're going to need is 2 cups of warm water. You want this
water to be between 105 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit, any cooler your yeast won't
activate, any hotter and you'll kill your yeast. We're going to add this to the bowl of a stand mixer.
Now along with that water we are going to add 5 teaspoons of active dry yeast.
And just a teaspoon of granulated sugar.
Now we're just going to stir these ingredients together.
And just let it sit for about 5 minutes or until the yeast is foamy.
So once your yeast is nice and foamy we are going to add 2 tablespoons of olive oil
And 3 tablespoons of firmly packed light brown sugar.
And we're just going to stir everything together.
Now the next thing you're going to need is 6 cups of bread flour. You're going to
want to use bread flour because it's going to yield a chewy bagel than
all-purpose would; the same reason I use this for my homemade pretzels. Now this
is 6 cups, and we're going to add 1 tablespoon of salt to this, and you'll
want to stir your flour and your salt together.
I'm using a pretty small bowl here so it's going to be a little bit tricky, but
just so long as you're getting mostly incorporated into the flour it'll be fine.
Ok so now you're going to want to fit your stand mixer with a dough hook
attachment, and we're going to turn our mixer speed to low.
We are going to gradually add our flour mixture to our yeast and water mixture so everything is completely combined.
My dough hook is having some trouble getting some of the flour on the sides.
So now that I've added about half of the flour, I'm just going to pause and use
the spatula just scrape down the sides of the bowl, and just try to work
everything together briefly with my spatula.
Alright now we'll keep going.
Now as with most yeast recipes, the amount of flour that you're going to
need is not an exact science. So for this recipe
the consistency we're looking for is a very dry dough. You don't want it to be
sticking to your fingers. As you can see this dough right here is pretty dry, but
I want to get it a little bit more combined and check it again. I want to
get all that flour worked in, and then we'll check it again.
This is still just a little bit too sticky. So I'm going to gradually add about a tablespoon of
flour at a time, until we have a nice dry consistency.
And keep an eye on your mixer because this is a very stiff dough. It's quite a workout for your mixer.
We're going to do a lot of the kneading by hand actually. So make sure you lock
down the head and just keep an eye on it. You don't want to burn out your motor.
We're getting there I'm still going to add another tablespoon though.
Alright, this is looking pretty good. It's a pretty dry dough. It's not sticking to my
fingers at all. So we are ready to move this out of our mixer and move it to the
counter top where we're going to knead it. I don't want to go any further in my
mixer bowl because I don't want to burnout the motor in my mixer. So let me transfer this to my clean countertop.
Now we are going to knead this dough by hand for about five to six minutes or until it is smooth and elastic.
Now your dough should not be sticking to your countertop. It should feel a little bit
dry. Some of that dryness will go away as you knead it, but if you find that it's
sticking you're going to want to add a little bit more flour until it's no longer sticking.
And if you do need to add more flour just sprinkle it over
your dough and you'll work it in while you're kneading it.
Alright our dough is nice and smooth and elastic so we're going to transfer this to a large bowl,
and make sure it is a big bowl because your dough's going to double in size. And
I'm just going to lightly oil this bowl with a little bit of olive oil.
We'll drop this in our bowl.
Cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and now we're going to
let this sit in a warm draft-free place until it's doubled in size. That's going
to take about one to two hours. Once your bagel dough has doubled in size we're
going to go ahead and gently deflate this.
And I'm going to turn it out onto my countertop.
Now this bagel recipe makes about a dozen bagels. So I'm going to divide this dough into twelve pretty even sized pieces.
This is not an exact science.
I've found the easiest way to divide the dough is just to stretch you out into a
log and then cut it into about twelve even sized pieces.
I found when you're shaping your bagels it can help to lightly dust your hands with just a
little bit of flour. So what we're going to do is we're going to take each dough
ball, and we're going to roll it tightly into a nice uniform ball.
Just use your thumbs to gently work a hole in the center.
The holes are going to shrink a bit, but when you first roll out and shape your bagels you want it to be about two
inches in diameter. We're going to want to transfer these bagels to parchment
paper lined baking sheets. You want to put about six bagels on each sheet. You
want to give them a little space because the bagels are going to grow, and one
thing that I like to do, and recommend, is sprinkle each baking sheet with about a
teaspoon and a half of cornmeal. This is going to keep the bagels from sticking
to the parchment paper. So once you have shaped all of your bagels, you are going
to want to take a clean towel and just cover the pan so that your bagels are covered.
We're going to let them sit while we preheat our oven, and while we
bring two quarts of water to a boil. Now your oven is going to need to reach 425
degrees Fahrenheit. This is probably going to take about 20-30 minutes or so,
and we will go ahead now and head over to the stovetop.
Now some bagel recipes recommend adding barley malt syrup, or honey, to the water.
I don't usually keep barley malt syrup on hand, so I'm not going to be using that
today. I will however add some honey. We're going to be adding 1/4 cup of
honey to the water. Now the honey adds a little bit of chewiness. A little bit of
subtle sweetness to the exterior of the bagel, but honestly, when I asked my taste
testers, they really couldn't tell much of a difference between the bagels that
have been cooked in honey and the bagels that had been cooked just in plain water.
So this is completely up to you. If you are using honey you'll want to make sure that
you stir the water and the honey together, that way the honey doesn't just stay settled on the bottom of the pot.
Once your water comes to a rolling boil, we're going to uncover our bagels.
And we are going to drop them, about two to three at a time, in our boiling water and cook them for 45 to 60 seconds on each side.
Boiling the bagels is absolutely critical. It's
going to help make them nice and chewy. This is what makes a bagel a bagel. So
you don't want to skip this step, or you're just going to have round disks of bread. It's not going to be the same.
Once you've boiled each bagel you'll remove it from the water. Let it drain and we're going to return it to our baking sheet.
Our bagels are almost ready for the oven. We have one more thing left to do. We're
going to brush them with an egg wash, which you can make by beating together one large egg.
Get that shell out of there. And just a teaspoon of water.
And I'm just going to use a fork to whisk these together.
You'll want to use a pastry brush to liberally brush each bagel with this egg wash.
This is going to give them a really nice golden brown color. If you want to add any toppings to
your bagels you'll want to do that now. Poppy seeds, sesame seeds are a great
option. Asiago cheese is fantastic. You can leave them plain. I love to do an
everything topping, and if you actually want the recipe for that you can just
hop over to my blog, where I leave a short description at the end of the
recipe on how to make that. Today I am just going to be using poppy seeds on
some, leaving the other half plain. I would do all, everything bagel, but I have
a cabinet full of them right now and Zach hates everything flavoring. So we're
gonna give him a break today. Now these bagels are off to our 425
degree fahrenheit preheated oven where they're going to need to bake for about
20 to 22 minutes or until they're a nice golden brown.
And that is how you make homemade bagels from scratch. I hope you guys try this recipe out for perfect
chewy bagels, and let me know what you think. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
All you need is a little cream cheese and these are perfect.